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RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


BY 


FULTON J. SHEEN 
Pu.D., S.T.D. 


AGREGE EN PHILOSOPHIE DE L’UNIVERSITE DE LOUVAIN 
MEMBER OF THE FACULTY OF THEOLOGY, THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA 


LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
NEW YORK - LONDON - TORONTO 
1928 


SHEEN? | Shae 
RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Fe 


Imprimatur: yx Parrick Carpinay Hayes, 


New York, May 21, 1928 ; 


COPYRIGHT: 1928 
BY LONGMANS, GREEN AND C 


FIRST EDITION 
- 
MADE IN THE UNITED STATES 0 


IMMUNI LABE VIRGINI 
= ORDINIS NOVI PRIMITIIS BEATA 
. A PATRE ELECTZ QU SPIRITU FECUNDA VERBO 


_ NASCENTIS INDE RELIGIONIS FIERET MATER 
fe EXIGUUM DICAT OPUSCULUM SUPPLEX 
SIBI OPEM ALM ROGANS PATRON ZE 


PREFACE 


RESENT-DAY religion is not in evolu- 
tion, but in revolution. Evolution implies 
growth from a germ, revolution a rup- 

ture with a principle; evolution has antecedents, 
revolution knows not its parentage. When we say 
that there is revolution in religion, we mean not 
merely a break with the past, but an abandonment 
as well of much that is best in the culture and 
heritage of tradition. 

Until a generation ago religion was generally 
understood in terms of man’s attitude toward a 
Supreme and Perfect Being; today, it is understood 
in terms of man’s friendliness to the universe or 
as “faith in the conservation of human values.” 
The term “ God” is still retained by some thinkers, 
but it is emptied of all content and dissolved to fit 
every volatile idea and fleeting fancy. God has 
been dethroned, the heavens emptied and man has 
been exalted to His place in fulfillment of an evil 
prophecy that some day he would be like unto God. 
Problems which once centered about God now re- 
volve about man, and those which were concerned 
with man are now fused with the universe. Theism 
is reduced to humanism and psychology to cos- 


vi 


Vill PREFACE 


mology, for there is no longer a distinction made 
between man and matter. God is humanized and 
man is naturalized. The science of physics and 
not the “flower in the crannied wall” has come 
to tell us what God and man are. 

No longer do men look to the past as to their 
Golden Age; no longer do they have a memory of 
a Garden wherein man walked with God in the 
cool breezes of evening. ‘The Golden Age is now 
placed in the future, but not one wherein man re- 
finds at the foot of a Tree the gifts he once lost 
there, thanks to a God-Man unfurled on it like a 
banner of salvation, but rather a future in which, 
due to a cosmic evolutionary urge, man not only 
makes but becomes God. Man in the supernatural 
state, it is said, needs no Redeemer as in the nat- 
ural state he needs no God. As a result of this 
philosophy of self-sufficiency we have the queer 
modern phenomenon of a religion without God and 
a Christianity without Christ. 

In these new terms religion remains the great 
concern of the modern mind. Never before has 
an irreligious world taken so much interest in re- 
ligion. It is the one subject anyone may talk 
about, though scientists alone may speak of science 
and geographers alone of geography. The press is 
teeming with it and university professors are lec- 
turing about it even when they lecture against it. 
But while it is true that there has never before 
been so much talking about religion, it is equally 
true that never before has there been so little walk- 


PREFACE 1X 


ing in it. Religion today is only doctrinal, not 
practical — a concern of the Pure but not the Prac- 
tical Reason. Its purpose seems to be to offer a 
consoling salve to erring consciences. Men first 
live and a doctrine is made to fit their living; bad 
thinking is flatteringly adjusted to bad living and 
thus phoenix-like a religion rises out of the ashes 
of irreligion. 

Because of this new and revolutionary change 
in religion, the exponents of the traditional con- 
cept have lost the ear of the changing world. ‘The 
terms “God” and “ Religion ” are still used, but 
they mean different things. It is easier for a 
Frenchman to understand an Englishman, than for 
a believer in a Perfect God to understand the God 
of Professor Alexander, “ who in the strictest sense 
of the term is not a Creator but a creature.” The 
two schools are talking a different language and 
revolving about different poles of thought: the 
older school is proceeding from God to religion 
while the new proceeds from religion to God. 

The task before the philosopher of religion whose 
reason commits him to a belief in God, the Alpha 
and Omega of all things, is not to state contra- 
dictory theses which have no common denominator 
nor multiple with those of his flesh and blood con- 
temporaries. Rather his task is to analyze the 
assumptions behind the modern view to determine 
whether or not they are justified. It is the things 
that are taken for granted in their position that 
must be challenged, for it may well be that philo- 


x PREFACE 


sophical assumptions are mere lyrical gratuities 
and their philosophy but free-verse poetry. 

It is to this labor of a calm and rational study 
of the assumptions behind the contemporary idea 
of religion that we have committed ourselves in 
writing this book. The method is threefold: ex- 
pository, historical, and critical. First, we have 
aimed to give an unprejudiced outline of the 
modern position both in its negative and positive 
aspects, refraining from all criticism; secondly, to 
trace out its historical origins, not so much 
through persons, as Jacques Maritain has ad- 
mirably done in his “ Les Trois Reformateurs,” 
to which we acknowledge indebtedness, but rather 
through philosophical principles and their evolu- 
tion; thirdly, to analyze the assumptions underly- 
ing the contemporary philosophy of religion and 
to present in a constructive way the rational ground 
for all religion from the natural point of view. 

God in relation to the anti-intellectual tendencies 
of the present day was examined in our previous 
work “ God and Intelligence,” of which this present 
volume is a continuation. The two are destined 
to be a complete philosophy of religion from both 
its formal and material angles. 

In conclusion we wish to thank Dr. Leon Canon 
Noel of the University of Louvain and Dr. Gerald 
B. Phelan of the University of Toronto for their 
scholarly inspiration and valued assistance. Deep- 
est thanks too are offered to Rt. Rev. Msgr. Ed- 
ward A. Pace, Ph.D. and Rt. Rev. Msgr. James 


PREFACE x1 
H. Ryan, Ph.D. of The Catholic University of 


America for their learned and characteristically 
kind help, and to Professor A. J. McMullen of 
Harvard University for reading the book in manu- 
script and offering many valuable suggestions to 
make it more readable. For the tedious task of 
making the Index we are grateful to our friend, 


Rev. Henry J. Gebhard, M.A. 


CONTENTS 


PART I 
Contemporary Philosophy of Religion 


CHAPTER PAGE 
I. Mopern Reticion 1n Its NecaTIVE ASPECT 3 


II. Mopern Re ticion 1n Its Positive Aspecr' 60 


PART II 
The Historical Origins of the Contemporary 
Idea of Religion 


II]. THe SprriruaAt PRINCIPLES BEHIND THE Evo- 
LUTION OF THE CONTEMPORARY IDEA OF 


et EE ea 85 
IV. THe Puitosopuy or INDIVIDUALISM ..... 102 
Meets PuILOsopHy oF Facr. ..... 2. 6 1 


PART III 
Critical Appreciation of the Contemporary Idea 
of ‘Religion in the Light of the Philosophy 
of St. Thomas Aquinas 


VIT. THe Fatuacy or NoMINALISM. ....... 195 
VIII. Toe Fattacy or tHE Unirorm METHOD oF 
MR arg elles ighiigk oti ccwre (hee pure 224 


CHAFTER 


Be: Pe se 


emporary Philosophy 


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RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


BAR Des1 


Contemporary Philosophy 
of Religion 


CHAPTER I 


MODERN RELIGION IN ITS NEGATIVE ASPECT 


‘['e scientific study of religion has under- 
gone tremendous changes during the last 
four centuries, changes due in part to the 

modern mode of approaching problems, and in 

part to the universal adoption of the experimental 
method. This changed attitude towards the prob- 
lems of religion has been marked with each 
succeeding century. The sixteenth century asked 
for a “new Church,” the eighteenth for a “new 

Christ,” the nineteenth for a “new God,” and 

the twentieth asks for a “new religion.” In 

response to these appeals and in the name of 

“progress,” “science” and “liberty,” the Church 

became a sect, Christ but a moral teacher, God the 

symbol for the ideal tendency in things, and re- 
ligion an attitude of friendliness to the universe. 
The new conception of religion is quite differ- 
ent from the old; it is different because it has as 
3 


4 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


its heritage a vast array of negations and as its 
promise rich hopes for the glorification of man 
and not God. All these have contributed their 
share to usher in the new idea of religion: new sci- 
entific formulas which ever seek to overflow into 
theology, an increasing impatience with the tra- 
ditional and the dogmatic, a growing demand for 
a system flattering to new ways of living, and 
finally a desire to reduce everything to a single 
category. Professor H. W. Carr declares that sci- 
ence is the most important of these influences. 
“It is the progress of science,” he writes, “‘ which 
has required philosophy from time to time to re- 
vise the concept of God. The great metaphysical 
task which confronts us today is to reform the no- 
tion of God which the mathematical philosophers 
of the seventeenth century have bequeathed to us, 
in order to bring it into accord with the new con- 
cepts of biological science.” * | 
And what is this new idea of religion? It is 
briefly a religion without God, that is, God as tra- 
ditionally understood. Religion, according to the 
twentieth century philosophers and theologians, 
centres not about God but man. “It is man first 
and not God,” says one of the exponents of the © 
new notion; “it is as much God only as man may 
seem to suggest or prove. Above all, it is God re- 
vealed by man and not man by God. Our revela- 
tion today is from earth to heaven, from clod to 


+ H. W. Carr, “ Changing Backgrounds in Religion and Ethics,” 
1927) P» 74- 


MODERN RELIGION —NEGATIVE = 5 


God — not vice versa as in the old days.”? “The 
scientific interpretation of natural phenomena,” 
says another, “ has made the interest in God more 
remote, God’s existence more problematical, and 
even the idea of God unnecessary. Mathematics 
and physics are making it increasingly difficult to 
assign a place for God in our co-ordinations and 
constructions of the universe; and the necessity 
of positing a first cause or of conceiving a de- 
signer, a necessity which seemed prima facie ob- 
vious to a pre-scientific generation, does not exist 
for us.”* The word “God” may still be retained 
in this new idea of religion, but that word takes on 
an entirely new meaning; it may even reach such 
a volatile state as to become identified with al- 
most anything from a psychical complex to an 
ideal. It may even be ignored altogether as it is, 
for example, by one for whom “new religion will 
be an outcome of the wants, the hopes and the as- 
pirations of these our times and the near future.” * 

When we speak of the “ modern” or the “ con- 
temporary ” idea of religion we do not mean 
““modern” in the strict chronological sense of a 
definite period of time. Rather, we mean a 
“spirit ”?—a spirit which is so peculiar to con- 
temporary ways of thinking and so different from 
the past that in contrast, the new outlook may be 


2 John Haynes Holmes, The New Basis of Religion in “ Essays 
towards Truth,” 1924, p. 218. 

8-H. W. Carr, “ Changing Backgrounds in Religion and Ethics,” 
1927, P. 74. 

* C. A. F. Rhys Davids, “ Old Creeds and New Needs,” 1923, p. 178. 


6 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


called “ modern.” The new attitude toward relig- 
ion is different both in degree and kind from any- 
thing which might be called either traditional or 
orthodox. It is quite true that there are many no- 
tions of religion which do not fit in with the syn-_ 
thesis we are about to present. These notions and 
systems may be modern in the sense that they are 
presented in our own day but they are not modern 
in the sense that they represent the “ progressive 
and liberating spirit” of contemporary philoso- 
phers and theologians. 

It is with this new idea of religion that this book 
is concerned;° special consideration should be 
given it for certainly there could be no question of 
greater importance or more fundamental than that 
of the relationship between God and man. Man 
is said to be “incurably religious,” and as nothing 
human was foreign to Terence so nothing religious 
can be foreign to man. 

It is only fair to the protagonists of the new 
doctrines that they present their own case. For 
that reason we propose to divide the work into 
three sections. The first section presents the new 
idea of religion sympathetically and uncritically; 
the second section traces out its historical origins; 
and the third examines it critically in the light of 
the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. 


Every science has a double object: a material 


5 The modern idea of God is treated expressly and in detail in 
** God and Intelligence,” Fulton J. Sheen, London, 1925. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 7 


object which is the thing studied, for example, mat- 
ter in physics; a formal object, which is the peculiar 
aspect or “angle” of the study, for example, in 
physics, matter again, inasmuch as it is in move- 
ment. A thorough-going study of modern religion 
will have to take account of both these objects. 
Not only that, it will also be obliged to consider 
the older and the more traditional ideas of religion, 
for every philosophical and theological movement 
is either a reaction or a departure from something 
which preceded it. This means that the modern 
idea of religion will have to be treated under both 
its negative and positive aspects; its negative as- 
pect will be the criticism of the old notions it hopes 
to supplant, and its positive will be the expression 
of the new tenets it hopes to implant. 

Although the following synthesis and summary 
of the contemporary idea of religion appears at the 
beginning of this study, in ordine inventionis it 
came only at the end. It has been extracted from 
the contemporaries themselves and is no a priort 
construction. It is not an architect’s plan of some- 
thing which is to be constructed; rather it is an 
artist’s sketch of a reality already existing —an 
after-thought rather than an inspiration. 


The Modern Idea of Religion 


MATERIAL OBJECT FORMAL OBJECT 
Negative —noGod (astra- Negative — anti-intellectual. 
ditionally understood). Positive — Religious Expe- 


Positive — Values. rience. 


8 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


This book shall concern itself only with the ma- 
terial object of religion, the formal aspect having 
been already treated in God and Intelligence.* 


The Material Object of Modern Religion 
Negatively Considered 


God as the Supreme and Perfect Being 1s not the 
necessary object of religion. This statement repre- 
sents the negative side of the modern idea of re- 
ligion and its reaction to the traditional notion. 
This does not mean that the term God is no longer 
used in religion by our contemporaries. As a mat- 
ter of fact, it is used, and used very often. But it 
is never taken to mean the Supreme Being of tra- 
ditional thought. God may mean anything from a 
“harmonization of epochal occasions” to a “ pro- 
jected libido.” Here we are not asserting the logi- 
cal superiority of the traditional over the contem- 
porary idea; we are just asserting a fact —viz., God 
as traditionally understood is no longer accepted 
as the object of religion. And what is the tradi- 
tional conception of God? It is that of a Supreme 
and Perfect Being, the Alpha and the Omega of all 
things: the Alpha, for without Him there would 
never be things to progress or evolve; the Omega, 
for without Him there would never be a reason for 
their evolving. Perfect He is with the plentitude of 
Being with its transcendental proprieties of Unity, 
Truth and Goodness; not static, because Life itself; 


° The negative aspect, pp. 9-31; pp. 62-141. The positive aspect, 
PP. 31747, 141-218. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE 9g 


not dynamic, because Perfect; not evolving, be- 
cause the Intelligibility of Evolution. Because He 
is and because everything else zs not but has being, 
there is a dependence of all that is not Him on Him, 
and this dependence is the foundation of all re- 
ligion. 

The reasons urged by contemporaries against 
the traditional concept of God may be reduced to 
three: the philosophical, the psychological and the 
sociological. 


Philosophical Negations of the Traditional Object 
of Religion 

Though William James no longer exerts a per- 
sonal influence in the world of philosophy, it is 
nevertheless true that his works carry on the task 
which he left unfulfilled. Pragmatism as a method 
may be dead, but Pragmatism as a spirit is alive 
and palpitating. Professor Julius S. Bixler of 
Smith College, in his excellent presentation of “ Re- 
ligion in the Philosophy of William James” has 
stressed this point. “Pragmatism,” he writes, 
“will appeal to the coming generation because of 
its creative faith.... And James’ believing, 
achieving, creative individual will find a scope for 
his powers and an application for his ideals un- 
paralleled in history.”’ Out of that vast array of 
philosophical material he left behind there is only 
a small but yet very important part of it which 
interests us, namely, his idea of religion. The influ- 


T0026, De alo. 


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IO RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


ences which worked for his particular theory of 
religion were varied and complex. His Swedenbor- 
gian father and his empirical training in physiology 
and medicine equipped him to look upon physical 
results empirically. The anti-intellectualism of 
Bergson (the publication of whose “‘ Creative Evo- 
lution’ James regarded as one of the world’s most 
important events, because it “killed intellectual- 
ism absolutely dead”), the pluralism of Renouvier, 
the utilitarianism of Mill, the reaction to the ab- 
solutists of Oxford, all conspired to make him the 
author of a religion which might be called the re- 
ligion of a romantic utilitarian.® 

Did James believe in a Perfect and Supreme 
Being as the object of religion? The answer is 
clearly in the negative. The best definition of re- 
ligion he leaves us is to be found in his “ Varieties 
of Religious Experience,” where he says: “Re- 
ligion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to 
take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts and ex- 
periences of individual men in their solitude, so 
far as they apprehend themselves to stand in rela- 
tion to whatever they consider the divine.”° Quite 
naturally, the meaning of the word “ divine” must 
be the key to this notion, and we must go on to in- 
quire what he means by it. Never is he clear in 
defining just what itis. “ The word ‘ divine,’” he 
writes later on in the same work, “‘as employed 
therein, shall mean for us not merely the primal — 
and the enveloping and real. . . . The divine shall 


8 René Berthelot, “ Un Romantisme Utilitaire,” 1922, Vol. 3. 
9p 
Meee 


MODERN RELIGION —NEGATIVE = 11 


mean for us only such a primal reality as the indi- — 
vidual feels impelled to respond to solemnly and 
gravely, and neither by a curse nor a jest.” *° The 
divine can mean no single quality, it must mean a 
group of qualities, by being champions of which in 
alternation, different men may all find worthy mis- 
sions. “So a ‘ god of battles’ must be allowed to 
be a god for one kind of person, a ‘ god of peace and 
heaven and home’ for another.”™ This power 
which is beyond us and from whom saving experi- 
ences come need not be infinite. “ All that the 
facts require is that the power should be both other 
and larger than our conscious selves. Anything 
larger will do, if only it be large enough to trust for 
the next step. It need not be infinite; it need only 
be solitary.” ” 

In this work quite evidently God needs only to 
be a power, conscious like ourselves, but certainly 
not perfect. At one point James is logical with his 
pluralism and entertains the possibility of polythe- 
ism, in the sense of a union of these god-like selves. 

But in order to make more clear the object of re- 
ligion as understood by James, it is well to ask if the 
Absolute will do for religion, and then if the Scho- 
lastic notion of God will do. The Absolute can be 
dismissed at once. It has no religious values, being 
fit only to give us a “‘ moral holiday.” ** He scanda- 
lized his hearers at Oxford by telling them: “ Let 
the Absolute bury the Absolute.” While he did not 
go so far as to believe that all Hegelians were prigs, 


10 Tbid., p. 38. 12 Thid Pps 52%. 
a* Idid.; p. 487. 13 «“ Pragmatism,” p. 72. 


12 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


he did say that he somehow felt, that “all prigs 
ought to end, if developed, by becoming Hege- 
lians.”** But if the Absolute will not serve as the 
object of religion, will not God as conceived by the 
Scholastics do? James would not admit this 
either. First of all, the existence of God cannot be 
proved, and here, strange to say, James offers no 
other argument than the argument of authority: 
“that all idealists since Kant have felt entitled 
either to scout or neglect them (proofs) shows that 
they are not solid enough to serve as religion’s all- 
sufficient foundation. . . . Causation is indeed too 
obscure a principle to bear the weight of the whole 
structure of theology.” ** Secondly, the attributes 
of God, as conceived by Scholastics are too barren 
and meaningless for this life; they are only the 
“ shuffling and matching of pedantic dictionary ad- 
jectives, aloof from morals, aloof from human 
needs, something that might be worked out from 
the mere word ‘God’ by one of these logical ma- 
chines of wood and brass which recent ingenuity 
has contrived as well as by a man of flesh and 
blood.” *° 

What then will the object of religion be, and 
what will be the meaning of the word “ divine” ? 
In his latest work James declares himself in favor 
of the finite God. “I believe that the only God 
worthy of the name must be finite.”*” “And He is 


14 « Essays in Radical Empiricism,” p. 276, ff. “ Pluralistic Uni- 
verse,” pp. 115-116, pp. 47-48. 

19 “ Varieties of Religious Experience,” p. 437. 

16 Ibid., pp. 446-447. 

17 “ Pluralistic Universe,” pp. 124, 125. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE § 13 


finite either in power or in knowledge or in both.” 
Ultimately, however, and to be logical with his 
Pragmatism, James would have to admit that any 
God which you could use would be the object of 
your religion, and if you could not use one in your 
religion then for you he would not exist. “If the 
hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the wid- 
est sense of the term, it is true.” ** If He does exist, 
He is to be conceived more as a co-worker than a 
sovereign. “ He works in an external environment, 
has limits and has enemies.” We can even help 
Him “to be more effectively faithful to his own 
greater tasks.”** “God Himself in short may draw 
vital strength and increase of very being from our 
~ fidelity.” ” 

While it is not so much to our point to decide 
definitely just what kind of God James did believe 
in, it suffices to know that religion for him de- 
manded no perfect Supreme Being. God as tradi- 
tionally understood certainly is not the God-concept 
of William James, for whom God was “more 
a powerful ally of ideals” rather than a “real ex- 
istent Being.” * A God who is “ only the ideal ten- 
dency in things” ** is a God already in a state of 


18 Jbid., p. 311. Among other philosophers holding to the finite 
God may be mentioned: F. C. S. Schiller, “ Riddles of the Sphinx ”; 
James Ward, “Realm of Ends”; H. G. Wells, “God the Invisible 
King,” and J. C. McTaggart, R. H. Rashdall, R. H. Dotterer, and 
G. H. Howison. 

19 “ Pragmatism,” p. 299. 

20 «Pluralistic Universe,” p. 124. 

21 “Varieties of Religious Experience,” p. 517. 

22 «“ The Will to Believe,” p. 61. 

me Letters,” Vol..2,.pp. 2137214. 

24 « Pluralistic Universe,” p. 124. 


e © NH 


14 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


philosophical decomposition. Here is the sugges- 
tion of what becomes clearer in more recent phi- 
losophers; namely, religion which brings man into © 
more increasing prominence. From a notion of a 
finite God whom we help in His tasks, or an “ ideal 
tendency in things ” to the notion of a God whom 
we not only help in tasks, but help to create is only 
a step. Huxley described the religion of Comte 
as “Catholicism without Christianity,” and M. 
Berthelot continues the figure by saying that the 
“religion of William James is a Protestantism 
without Christianity.”” In a certain sense it may 
be justly described as a religion without God, for 
God to him means only what each individual takes 
as the divine. It is a great departure from the tra- 
ditional notion and a bold assertion of what was 
implied in the philosophy of Mill. With James’ 
successors it takes on a physical or a mathematical 
turn but always retains the aseity of the individual 
in the face of a Perfect and Supreme Being whom 
thinkers of a different school looked upon as the 
source and foundation of all religion. 


Religion according to Professor Alexander 


This distinguished professor of Manchester Uni- 
versity has given to the modern world a notion of 
religion which is quite unlike that of many of his 
contemporaries and yet has something in com- 
mon with them; namely, its rejection of a Perfect 
and Supreme Being as the object of religion. 

25 O+. cit., Vol. 3, ps8. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE © 15 


His notion of religion can only be understood in 
relation to his whole philosophy of Space-Time. 
The stuff of which this universe is made and the 
matrix whence all things come, is spatio-temporal. 
This means that the universe is essentially a uni- 
verse of motion, and of continuous redistribution of 
instants of Time among points of Space. 

Characteristic of the universe of Space-Time is 
its constant differentiation into higher and higher 
complexes, a tendency constituting a nisus towards 
deity, for deity is the upward urge of evolution. 
Within the all-embracing stuff of Space-Time the 
universe exhibits, in its emergence in time, succes- 
sive levels of finite existence, each with its own 
characteristic empirical quality. At one end of 
the scale it is undifferentiated Space-Time; at the 
other end progressive value. Among the three 
principal qualities, the highest known to us at pres- 
ent is mind or consciousness. Now, deity is always 
the next higher empirical quality to the one pres- 
ently evolved. This is true throughout all the 
levels of existence. When, therefore, the “ grow- 
ing world” was nothing more than empirical con- 
figurations of Space-Time, Deity, which by defini- 
tion is the next quality to the one presently evolved, 
was matter. When the growing world reached the 
level matter, deity was at the stage of life. When 
the world evolved to life, deity was at mind. We 
are now at the mind stage, and deity is the stage 
above us, always marching ahead of us very tan- 
talizingly. When we evolve to the stage where 


16 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


deity is now, that stage will be the stage of angels 
and deity will move up a peg. Deity is therefore 
“a variable quality, and as the world grows in 
time, deity changes with it.” * In brief, “God as 
actually possessing deity does not exist, but is an 
ideal, tending toward deity which does exist... . 
As an actual existent, God is the infinite world with 
its nisus towards deity.” * 

What is religion according to such a notion? 
Religion is communion with this future quality of 
deity. It is “the sense of outgoing to the whole 
universe in its process towards the quality of 
deity.” ** But, it may be asked, how can this future 
quality of deity affect us and be an object of re- 
ligion? Professor Alexander recognizes the diffi- 
culty and attempts to answer it by saying that what 
acts upon us is what brings forth deity, namely the ~ 
actual world. It contains deity in germ inasmuch 
as the actual is the seed of the future, and the future 


26 “Tt is clear that, while for us men deity is the next higher 
empirical quality to mind, the description of deity is perfectly general. 
For any level of existence, deity is the next higher empirical quality. It 
is therefore a variable quality, and as the world grows in time, deity 
changes with it. On each level a new quality looms ahead, awfully, 
which plays to it the part of deity. For us who live upon the level of 
mind deity is, we can but say, deity. To creatures upon the level of life 
deity is still the quality in front, but to us who come later this quality 
has been revealed as mind. For creatures who possessed only the primary 
qualities — mere empirical configurations of space-time — deity was 
afterwards what appeared as materiality, and their God was matter, for 
I am supposing that there is no level of existence nearer to the spatio- 
temporal than matter. On each level of finite creatures deity is for them 
some ‘unknown’? (though not ‘ unexperienced’) quality in front, the 
real nature of which is enjoyed by the creatures of the next level.” 
“ Space, Time and Deity,” 1922, Vol. 2, p. 348. 

27 [bid., Pp. 353s 

28 Ibid., p. 402. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE — 17 


is previsible in so far as we can forecast it in spatio- 
temporal terms. Just as clairvoyants may see the 
future, so too, he says, “ we may suppose that in re- 
ligious experience the vague future quality of deity 
is felt, not in its quality, for that cannot be known, 
but as giving flavor to the experience of the whole 
world which it does not possess as merely an object 
of sense or thought.” ” 

There is no further elaboration peated to show 
that the centre of religion, as understood by this 
philosopher, is not the God of a Leibnitz nor an 
Aquinas, but an entirely new concept born of a new 
science and a new physics. ‘The difference is not 
merely that his notion of God is one in pursuit of 
deity, while the traditional notion of God is one 
who does not pursue but possesses; there is the 
added difference of our relation to God. Here it is 
that Professor Alexander separates his notion of re- 
ligion most widely from all notions which may be 
classed as traditional. God, according to his opin- 
ion, is sustained and helped by us. “ We also help,” 
he writes, “to maintain and sustain the nature of 
God and are not merely his subjects. . . . God him- 
self is involved in our acts and their issues, or as it 
was put above, not only does he matter to us, but 
we matter to him,” * because he is “in the strictest 
sense not a creator but a creature.’* Quite natu- 
rally, if we are not God-made but God-makers, then 
in virtue of this new relation religion will have 
an entirely different meaning. Religion will not 


29 [bid., p. 379. °° Ibid., p. 388. %1 Ibid., p. 399, ttalics ours. 


18 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


be something which “ commands us to perform our 
duties with the consciousness that they are the com- 
mands of God.” Rather “it is religion to do our 
duty with the consciousness of helping to create his 
deity.” Once it is allowed that “ deity owes its be- 
ing to pre-existing finites with their empirical quali- 
ties, and is their outcome,” * then religion will be- 
come co-operation with God instead of service of 
God. It will be something adventurous, something 
in which man takes a hand, and man instead of be- 
ing just a puppet dependent on a Perfect Being will 
have as his sublime vocation the duty of contribut- 
ing to the deity of God, by his life and actions. 
Such an idea of religion, Professor Alexander be- 
lieves, makes “our human position more serious, 
but frees it from the reproach of subjection to arbi- 
trary providence.” * - 
Professor Alexander leaves no doubt in the minds 
of his readers that he has little sympathy for the the- 
istic view of the world as commonly understood. 
His statement that religion means a “ consciousness 
of helping God to create his deity” is not so im- 
portant for our present concern as his repudiation 
of a God Who possesses Deity in its plentitude, 
and Whose Deity is not distinct from His Godhead. 
Even the most magnificent gesture of reverence of 
such a philosopher to the God of Augustine and 
Aquinas and the thought of which they are its 
noblest representatives, could not blind a reader 
to the obvious fact that Professor Alexander is 


82 “ Space, Time and Deity,” 1922, Vol. 2, p. 39. °° Ibid., p. 400. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE © 19 


through with God, who is not an evolving God. 
Whatever religion may be positively in his mind, 
certainly in its negative aspect it has no place in the 
Theism of the philosophia perennis. 


Religion according to Professor A. N. Whitehead 


Every one naturally approaches with respect any 
work by Professor Whitehead whose thinking in the 
field of mathematics, physics, and the philosophy of 
nature has been marked by profound originality 
and depth. Encouraged by success in these fields 
this distinguished scientist has branched out 
into the field of theology in his “ Religion in the 
Making,” which, despite its obtuse terminology and 
phraseology, has already gone into several editions. 
He has been described as “ one of the worst living 
expositors of philosophy, though he could be one 
of the best.” It would not do Professor Whitehead 
justice merely to state his theory of religion without 
giving his philosophy of the universe which lies be- 
hind it. No less than Spencer, Comte, James, he 
has inaugurated a new outlook on religion, this time 
based not on biology, or sociology or psychology but 
on physics and mathematics. 


The Philosophy of the Universe 


Contemporary philosophical thinking is breaking 
with the Cartesian tradition which has held sway 
the last three centuries. Philosophers no longer 
question the solutions of their immediate predeces- 
sors, Or swing with the speculative pendulum from 


20 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


one extreme of the dualist position to the other. 
They are challenging the fountain head of their 
whole tradition and sounding the depths of their 
new philosophical edifice. The question no longer - 
is: which solution is right—the empirical or the 
transcendental? but rather: is the problem we are 
attempting to solve a legitimate one? | 
The challenge against the whole tradition of mod- 
ern thought has been hurled by no one more boldly 
than by Professor Alfred N. Whitehead in his 
“Science and the Modern World.” ** Though it is 
the Cartesian succession which is attacked, one 
cannot help but wonder at the similar role he plays 
to Descartes. In both there are the same protests 
and the same reforms. Descartes protested against 
the old physics of his time such as that of Telesius 
with his two principles of heat and cold. Professor ~ 
Whitehead protests against the Newtonian physics 
of matter and mass in space and time, which has 
been serving us for two centuries. Descartes re- 
pudiated the decadent Scholasticism he learned at 
Fleche, believing there was a conflict between it 
and the new science of his time. Dr. Whitehead, in 
his turn, repudiates the dualistic philosophy of 
either matter or mind as substances, believing it 
to be in conflict with the new physics. Both wished 
to reform philosophy in the light of mathematical 
and physical sciences, Descartes ending in a mathe- 
matical philosophy of clear ideas and Professor 
Whitehead in a mathematical philosophy of rela- 
tivity. | 


84 1926. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = a1 


These are broad lines of similarity which we trace 
and not essential to the problem at hand. What 
is important is that the issue of the present philo- 
sophical parturition will probably be a new tradition 
of thought distinct and separate from that which at 
the present day is called modern. ‘“‘ Men can be 
provincial in time as well as in place,” writes Pro- 
fessor Whitehead. “We may ask ourselves whether 
the scientific mentality of the modern world in the 
immediate past is not a successful example of such 
provincial limitation.” ** He asks the philosophers 
to examine their conscience and pleads with them 
in the words of Cromwell: “ My brethren, by the 
bowels of Christ I beseech you, bethink you that 
you may be mistaken.” 

Modern philosophy, he argues, has been built on 
a false science—that of the seventeenth century 
— and the abandonment of that science must entail 
the abandonment of the philosophy and even the 
religion built upon it. The so-called solid founda- 
tions of science on which the last century built its 
anti-religion may after all be no more trustworthy 
than a house of cards. “ The stable foundations of 
physics have broken up; also for the first time 
physiology is asserting itself as an effective body 
of knowledge, as distinct from a scrap-heap. The 
old foundations of scientific thought are becoming 
unintelligible. Time, space, matter, material, ether, 
electricity, mechanism, organism, configuration, 
structure, pattern, function, all require reinter- 
pretation.” * 

85 “« Science and the Modern World,” Chap. 1. Re Dida. BA. 


a RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


That great changes are taking place in the scien- 
tific conception of the universe is indisputable. 
Whether the new notions are true or false has yet 
to be decided; the fact is, they do jar with the old 
physics. The curvature of space, for example, 
when compared with our “ old ” idea that two paral- 
lel lines travelling in the same direction will never 
meet is like a square peg to a round hole. The new 
quantum theory of physics upsets the lay notion ~ 
that we never reach a limit in the unit of electric- 
ity. The theory of relativity comes as a surprise to 
the old scientists who looked upon things as essen- 
tially in space and accidentally in time, and rather 
baffles the untrained mind in its attempt to under- 
stand that space and time are relative not to the 
“simple location” of matter, but to the position — 
and location of the observer. So too we are scandal- — 
ized to learn that much of the physics and chemis- 
try and geometry we studied in school is now to 
be scrapped like armaments. The point, we are 
told, is no longer considered an ultimate in math- — 
ematics, but merely a limit of a converging series 
of lines which cannot be understood apart from 
that series. Modern physics no longer considers 
the atom as ultimate but only as a centre of 
electro-magnetic influence. Geometry is no longer 
interested in solid bodies but only in their spatial 
relations. Meaningless in themselves, these rela-~ 
tions are intelligible only in reference to the place 
which they occupy within the system, and the sys- 
tem is the spatio-temporal continuum. No so- 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE ~ 23 


called ultimate constituent is intelligible except in 
relation to the whole system within which it acts. 
In the words of Professor Ralph Barton Perry: 
“The physical world is no longer made up of reality 
behind the scenes which is known only by inference 
from the phenomenal appearances, but as a system 
of those appearances — which are no longer appear- 
ances in the old sense of the term, but the very sub- 
stance and tissue of nature.” * 

The whole tradition of modern philosophy has 
been built on Newtonian physics, so the new school 
tells us. It may have a head of gold, but its feet are 
clay and the rock of the new physics hewn from the 
mountain of Einstein and relativity will sooner or 
later smash it to pieces. The time has arrived for a 
new philosophy of the universe. 

There is a vast difference between them. ‘The 
old philosophy was a philosophy of “ substance,” of 
*‘ matter,” of “nature.” Old science from the Ioni- 
ans up to our own day asked the question: “ What 
is nature made of? ‘The answer was couched 
in terms of stuff or matter or material — the partic- 
ular name chosen is indifferent—which has the 
property of simple location in space and time, or, 
if you adopt the more modern ideas, in space-time. 
What I mean by matter, or material is anything 
which has this property of simple location.” * 

Such conceptions of nature, Professor Whitehead 
considers as mechanical and lifeless. In their place 
he prefers to carry over into physics the biological 


87 «Philosophy of the Recent Past,” 1925. 
88 “Science and the Modern World,” p. 72. 


24 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


idea of the organism. The universe is not made up 
of stones, it is made up of organisms. Substances 
are not the units of things and events are not their 
motion, but events are the units of things and what 
is described-as a material object 1s just a feature of 
events. There are no substances —there are only 
“events.” Descartes willed three substances to 
philosophy — matter, mind and God. Hobbes 
dropped mind and God from his scheme of nature, 
but retained matter; Berkeley dropped matter and 
retained God and mind; the absolutists dropped 
matter and mind but retained God. Professor 
Whitehead drops all three. Substances belonging 
to the “old physics of simple location” are anti- 
quated and guilty of the “Fallacy of Misplaced 
Concreteness.” 

If substances do not exist, then what does exist? 
Professor Whitehead answers: “ events, moments, 
epochal occasions.” ** What we call creatures, or 
things, or substances are in reality only “ epochal 
occasions.” ‘The motion or the event is not an acci- 
dent of a substance, rather, to put it in the old 
terminology, it is the substance which is the “ acci- 
dent of the event.” The ground or the basis of all 
things is space-time, and “ space-time is nothing 
else than a system of pulling together of assemblages 
into unities. But the word ‘ event’ means one of 
these spatio-temporal unities.” *° There is complete 
interdependence of each and every part of the unt- 
verse, beginning with space, of which every volume 


89 « Religion in the Making,” 1927, p. 91. 
40 “ Science and the Modern World,” p. 106. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE — 25 


mirrors in itself every other volume, and time, of 
which every moment has reference both to the past 
and the future. “Everything is everywhere at all 
times.” ** Each event has a past and a future and is 
bound up with both. 

In other words, the principle at work in this 
spatio-temporal universe, which links one thing to 
another and makes all things interdependent is “ the 
principle of concretion.” In its simplest form this 
principle was expressed by Tennyson in his lines 
about the little flower in the crannied wall: “If 
I knew you, root and all in all, I should know what 
God and man is.” ‘The principle of concretion 
means that everything that exists, involves in some 
way the totality of all being. Everything which is, 
has some share in the flower, the sun, the moon, the 
stars, the soil, the air; not only that, even the past 
events are “organic” in some way with it, such 
as the disturbances of the earth, laws of evolution 
and growth and even armies or warriors who passed 
over that very soil on which the flower grows. 
Everything that is or ever has been or ever will be is 
organic in that flower in concentric circles of in- 
fluence. The flower “prehends” all being; the 
universe is “ concreted ” in the flower.” The flower 
is the “unification of the universe, whereby its 
various elements are combined into aspects of 


#1 Thid., P. 133- 

42 “ Things are separated by space, and are separated by time; but 
they are also together in space and together in time, even if they be 
not contemporaneous. I will call these characters the ‘ separative’ and 
the ‘ prehensive’ character of space-time.” ‘ Science and the Modern 
World,” p. 94. 


26 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


each other.” It might also be called an “ epochal 
occasion” for an “epochal occasion” is a mi- 
crocosm inclusive of the whole universe.“ ‘The 
flower mirrors the universe. 

The flower, is “‘ concrete ” and the concrete means 
the unification of the many in the one, e.g., the 
color, the earth, the moisture, the sunlight, etc. But 
there is something important to be added. Not 
only do other things enter into a particular thing, 
but something else enters in which is more impor- 
tant, and that something else is “form” or possi- 
bility or universal. Everything in the world which 
is “concreted ” existed as a form before it came 
into being in this spatio-temporal universe. A 
Scholastic might say that all things in the world 
were made according to the archetypal ideas in the 
mind of God. Everything was once a form before 
it had existence, or when it existed in the realm of 
the possibles. Now these forms enter into things to 
make them what they are. Not only that, new 
forms enter into concrete things in the process of 
the evolution or the unfolding of the universe.* 

In summary, everything in this universe, or every 
creature, or even better “every epochal occasion ” 
(“epochal occasions are the creatures ”) has two 
sides. On one side it “ concretes ” or brings together 


43 “ Religion in the Making,” p. 100. 

44 “Tn the concretion the creatures are qualified by the ideal forms, 
and conversely ideal forms are qualified by the creatures. Thus the 
epochal occasion which is the emergent, has in its own nature the other 
creatures under the aspect of these forms, and analogously it includes 
the forms under the aspect of these creatures. It is thus a definite limited 
creature, emergent in consequence of the limitations thus mentally im- 
posed on each other by the elements.” Jbid., p. 93. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE 27 


actual elements of the universe; on the other side, 
viz., its creative or formative side, it is made up of 
ideal forms which enter into the actual epochal 
occasion during the creative process or the unfolding 
of the universe. “ But these are not two actual 
entities, the creature and creativity. There is only 
one entity which is the self-creating creature.” *° 

Now a question arises which has great conse- 
quences for religion. What effects the union of the 
two sides of the epochal occasion? What introduces 
the new form into the present concrete thing? What 
gave the giraffe a long neck, supposing that at one 
time he was a mere “ epochal occasion ” with a short 
neck? The forms are not actual; being only possi- 
bilities they have need of some determination. 
There must be something to decide when the time 
is ripe for the extra hump on the camel, or when 
matter is to blossom into life. 

The boundless wealth of possibility in the realm of ab- 
stract form would leave each creative phase still indetermi- 
nate, unable to synthesize under determinate conditions 
the creatures from which it springs. The definite determina- 
tion which imposes ordered balance on the world requires 


an actual entity imposing its own unchanged consistency 
of character on every phase.*® 


This something is God. 
_ And what is God? Is God, in the answer of the 
catechism, “the Creator of heaven and earth”? 


45 «Thus the epochal occasion has two sides. On one side it is a 
mode of creativity bringing together the universe. This side is the 
occasion as the cause of itself, its own creative act... . On the other 
side, the occasion is the creature. This creature is that one emergent 
fact.” Ibid., p. 101. 

46 Tbid., p. 94. 


28 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


No, God is the “ Principle of Concretion.” ” And 
what is the Principle of Concretion? It is the sys- 
tem of organization which makes all abstract forms 
and all things have a share in the constitution of 
every other thing in the universe. It is God who 
determines the universe and admits certain forms 
into the creative process when that process is ripe 
for them. 

On first glance it might seem that Professor 
Whitehead holds to the common-sense conception 
of God. There does seem to be a Providential 
ordering of the universe in his system; all things do 
seem to have been made according to patterns in the 


mind of God; God does seem to be beyond this uni- 


verse and identified with it — but this is only seem- 
ing. The God of Professor Whitehead is the God 
of Professor Whitehead, and not the living God of 
traditional thought. 

First of all, God, according to Professor White- 
head, is not a transcendent being. If He were, he 
argues, it would be impossible to know Him, for 
the reason that any proof which commences with 
considerations drawn from the actual world can 
never rise above the actuality of that world. If 
God is beyond this universe of space and time, inde- 
pendent of both these physical qualities, He would 
be non-existent as far as we are concerned for “we 
know nothing beyond this temporal world.” “ 


47 “ Science and the Modern World,” p. 250. 

48 An analysis of the world “ cannot discover anything not included 
in the totality of the actual fact and yet explanatory of it.” “Religion 
in the Making,” pp. 71, go. 


s 
. ea 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 29 


This one difference between the new and old 
conception of God is fundamental; the old philos- 
ophy which Professor Whitehead spurns believed 
in a Being Who was independent of the actual world, 
transcendent to it, and yet knowable through the 
visible things of the world. But there are yet other 
reasons why the new God of Professor Whitehead 
is quite a different species from that represented to 
us, for example, in the philosophy of St. Thomas, 
and it is this: if God is not beyond this actual spatio- 
temporal universe He must in some way be bound 
up with it. And such is the case. The inherent 
nature of the spatio-temporal universe is God. God 
Himself is not concrete like the flower in the cran- 
nied wall, but He is the principle which constitutes 
the concreteness of things. As the “Principle of 
Concretion ” He is the order of the universe, and 
since the order is immanent in the universe it can 
be truly said that God is immanent in the universe. 
“The actual world is the outcome of the esthetic 
order, and the esthetic order is derived from 
the immanence of God.” * God enters into each 
“epochal occasion” along with the concrete ele- 
ment and the formal element, the “creatures and 
the creativity.” Each new “ epochal occasion in- 
troduces God into the world.” ‘The actual world is 
the base for which He provides the idealform. “He 
adds himself to the actual ground from which every 

49 [bid., p. 105. For the author the order of this universe is not 
conceptual or moral, but zsthetic. It is the esthetic sense which makes 


us aware of the concrete fulness of things. 
60 Ibid.. p. 90. 


30 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


creative act takes its rise.” He is the great Ideal, 
and the power by which He sustains the world is 
that of Himself as this idea. Although omniscient, 
He is limited and finite in some respect. Evil 
fights against Him. He may also be described as a 
“fusion,” for it is He Who fuses together all the 
possibilities of the world in an harmonious way. 
“‘ Apart from Him there would be no actual world 
with its creativity, and apart from the actual world 
With its creativity there would be no rational ex- 
planation of the ideal vision which constitutes 
God.” : 

God then is not outside the universe as a Power, 
nor immanent in it by His causality, nor is He the 
end toward which all creation moves. God is not 
even a substance — nothing is, for there are only 
“nows” and “thens.” What we call things are 
combinations of something very much like energy 
which he calls “creativity,” something very much 
like abstract archetypal ideas which he calls 
“forms,” and something unlike anything a pre- 
Einsteinian philosopher or theologian has ever 
dreamed of, which he calls “ God.” 

This is not the place to discuss the merits of seh 
an outlook on the universe, and whatever be its 
merits it has already established itself in the good 
graces of philosophers who are already tired of 
biological and psychological and sociological inter- 
pretations of religion. It answers the craving for 
novelty ; it does more: it is in apparent keeping with 


51 « Religion in the Making,” pp. 153, 156, 157. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 31 


the new physics and the new science. It breaks with 
the past; it ushers in a new religion in which the 
traditional concept of God is banished to the 
scrap-heap of Ionian physics and Cartesian sub- 
stances. 


Religion according to Professor Otto 


Religion, since a long time, has been confused 
with many things which are not religion, such as 
ethics, esthetics, art and science. In certain quar- 
ters there has been growing a dissatisfaction with 
such all-inclusive religion and an attempt has been 
made to analyze its essential elements. The best 
work in this field has been done by the German phi- 
losophers, first of whom, we might mention Profes- 
sor [Troeltsch who along with Professor Otto has de- 
veloped the doctrine of the religious a priort. This 
a priori is to be understood in a wider sense than 
used by Kant. “In the ethical, the religious and 
the teleologico-zsthetic reason” writes Troeltsch, 
“Kant recognizes an a priori, which in that 
case naturally signifies, not the synthetic unify- 
ing function of scientific comprehension, but the 
way of judging and regarding the actual under 
ethical, religious and teleologico-xsthetic points of 
view, which is a necessity for reason and proceeds 
in accordance with its own laws.” * Behind psy- 
chical experiences of all kinds there is the a priori 
which enables us to discover values in the realm 
of facts, and to distil out of our impressions and our 


52 “ Gesammelte Schriften,” 1913, Band 2, p. 758. 


32 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


sense knowledge, those finer things which enter into 
religion strictly so called. 

Professor Otto has striven to define more ac- 
curately the nature of the religious a priori. Over 
and above ethical and moral categories there is an- 
other category in us which is bound up with our 
nature and inseparable from it. This category, or 
principle of interpretation and valuation is not 
moral or ethical, neither can it be translated into 
rational concepts. It is the category of the “ numi- 
nous ” or the “holy.” 

Since it is primitive it cannot be defined, but can 
be communicated only by suggestion and analogy.™ 
Every human being possesses it, though not every- 
one realizes it or uses it; some never call it into 
being. “ Most men have only the ‘ predisposition ’” 
in the sense of a receptiveness and susceptibility 
to religion and a capacity for freely recognizing 
and judging religious truth at first hand.” All 
men, for example, have a sense of the beautiful 
but not everyone calls it into action or develops 
that sense. So it is with this religious a prior. It 
is there rich in promise, if we would but make use 
of it. 

The religious a priori is something deeper than 
Kant’s practical reason though it bears many anal- 
ogies withit. It is essentially non-rational in char- 
acter, though Professor Otto is not always clear as 
to what he means by the non-rational. Sometimes 


53 Das Heilige,” English translation by John W. Harvey, 1923. 
4) Jbtd.y pe, 
§© Thid., D. 18t. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE — 33 


it seems that it is the non-definable,” at other times 
it is that which produces in us an emotion and not 
a concept.” ‘This non-rational activity, this power 
of “ divination,” this category of the “holy,” is to 
be referred to something still deeper than reason, 
namely to that which Mysticism has named the 
“fundus anime’ —the Seelengrund. It is not 
constituted by a rational reflection on things any 
more than is the Kantian Practical Reason, but it is 
occasioned by things; it does not arise out of sense 
impressions like the idea in Scholastic thought, but 
only by their means. “ ‘They are the incitement, the 
stimulus and the ‘ occasion’ for the numinous ex- 
perience to become astir, and, in so doing, to begin 
—at first with a naive immediacy of reaction — to 
be interfused and interwoven with the present world 
of sense experience, until, gradually, it disengages 
itself from this and takes its stand in absolute con- 
trast.” °° In the numinous experience the a priori 
cognitive elements are not so much perceptions as 
they are interpretations and valuations of experi- 
ence. “ The facts of the numinous consciousness 
point therefore — as likewise do also the ‘ pure con- 
cepts of the understanding’ of Kant and the ideas 
and value-judgments of ethics and esthetics —to 
a hidden substantive source, from which the relig- 
ious ideas and feelings are formed, which lies in the 
mind independently of sense-experience; a ‘pure 
reason’ in the profoundest sense which, because of 
the surpassingness of its content, must be distin- 


66 Tbid., pp. 1, 5, 60-61. 58 Tbid., p. 117. 
57 Ibid., pp. 8-10, 140. 


34 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


guished from both the pure theoretical and the pure 
practical reason of Kant, as something yet higher 
or deeper than they.” *° 

So much in general for the category of the Holy or 
the numinous —it is primitive, it is non-rational. 
But what elements are contained in it, when it is 
subjected to an analysis. Professor Otto enumer- 
ates five: (1) The element of awefulness, which in 
its primitive form is nameless fear, and in its devel- 
oped form survives in the quality of exaltedness or 
sublimity attributed to the Deity in such cries as 
“ Holy, Holy, Holy.” (2) Overpoweringness. In 
the first element one has the consciousness of “ hav- 
ing been created; ” in this, one has the “status of 
the creature.” This is the strain in religion that — 
makes for self-annihilation, and for making God 
all. (3) The element of urgency or energy, an ex- 
ample of which is to be found in the idea of the 
“wrath” of God or the “consuming flame” of 
Divine Love of which mystics write. (4) The 
wholly other or mysterious, viz., “that which is 
quite beyond the sphere of the usual, the intelligible, 
and the familiar, which therefore falls quite outside 
the limits of the ‘canny’ and is contrasted with it, 
filling the mind with blank wonder and astonish- 
ment.” (5) The element of fascination, namely 
that element which impels us not to retreat from the 
divine but rather to approach and commune with it. 
Salvation, atonement, reconciliation are all mani- 
festations of this element. 


59 “ Das Heilige,” English translation by John W. Harvey, 1923, 
p. 117. 0 1did.; Pp. 36. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 35 


In treating each element Professor Otto over and 
over again insists that there are no concepts or dog- 
mas or rational compartments into which they can 
be fitted. The transports of the mystic are as 
unintelligible to the secular mind as the felicity of 
the lover to the unromantic. The “ Holy” lies be- 
yond syllogisms and reasoning processes ; it is more 
deep than logic and far more fundamental. The 
rational element is only an afterthought or what 
Professor James called “‘ the outbuilding.” 

The question which interests our special prob- 
lem now presents itself. Does the religion of Das 
Heilige admit God in the traditional sense of the 
word? The answer is negative, both from the his- 
torical and the philosophical point of view. From 
the historical point of view, because Professor Otto 
denies primitive Monotheism, and seems to take a 
substantial religious evolution for granted, never 
making a distinction between Buddhistic and 
Christian mysticism or even attempting a distinc- 
tion of the true and the spurious.” From the phil- 
osophical point of view he departs from a belief in a 
Perfect Being, not only because he has eliminated 
the rational from religion, but because he seems to 
make the essence of religion consist in the emotion 
rather than the object upon which the emotion is di- 
rected. At most he will only concede that the 
“numinous is felt as objective and outside the 
self,” which of course gives no guarantee that it 
is really objective. If religion has an object for 
Professor Otto it is that element in things which 

Stulbid., PD. 133; 135% 62 Tbsd,, Ps 13. 


36 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


produces in us an “ eerie ” sensation of being in the 
presence of something aweful, mysterious and fasci- 
nating. This element in things whatever it may be 
certainly is not God, the Alpha and Omega of all 
things; and this one important fact in the religious 
philosophy of Professor Otto is sufficient to range 
him with an ever increasing group of present day 
thinkers who have protested against traditional 
thought on the subject of God. 


Religion according to Mr. Bertrand Russell 


In an article entitled “The Essence of Relig- 
ion” this author develops the idea that in man 
there is something infinite and something finite. 
The infinite in him is the principle of union with the 
world in general by which he knows of it and loves 
it as something beyond the categories of time and 
space and this and that. It is that in man which 
transcends the petty selfishness of the ego and goes 
out in search not for my good but for the good. 

The finite nature in man, on the contrary, is a 
principle of disunion, for it is that which makes 
the individual man assert his individuality and con- 
sequently his selfishness, and demarcates him from 
all other men and the rest of the universe. 

In proportion as this infinite grows in us we live 
more completely the life of universal nature. The 
finite self is the gaoler of the universal soul and these 
prison walls of the body must be broken down if life 


68 “Das Heilige,” English translation by John W. Harvey, 1923, 
Hibbert Journal, Vol. 11, p. 46 ff. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 37 


is to be lived at its best. ‘“‘ Sudden beauty in the 
midst of strife, uncalculating love, or the nightwind 
in the trees, seem to suggest the possibility of a life 
free from the conflicts and the pettiness of our every- 
day world, a life where there is peace which no mis- 
fortune can disturb.” “ But what is this infinite 
which at times so overwhelms us? Is it an object 
orisitan attitude? “ The quality of infinity which 
we feel, is not to be accounted for by the perception 
of new objects, other than those that at most times 
seem finite; it is to be accounted for, rather, by a 
different way of regarding the same objects, a con- 
templation more impersonal, more vast, more filled 
with love, than the fragmentary, disquiet considera- 
tion we give to things when we view them as means 
to help or hinder our own purposes.” * 

All that is required to pass from the life of the 
finite self to the life of the infinite is absolute self- 
surrender. And from that moment on, when the 
finite self appears as a death, “‘a new life begins, 
with a larger vision, a new happiness and wider 
hopes.” 

Now is God necessary for such a surrender? No, 
—and this is the important point. The surrender 
might possibly be easier for some if they believed in 
an all-wise God “ but it is not in its essence depend- 
ent on this belief or on any other.” ®° 

God then is not necessary for religion. All that 
is required is a communion with our infinite life, 
thanks to the crushing of the finite. From this 


64 Ibid., p. 48. °° Ibid. p. 49. °° Ibid., p. 50. 


38 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


point, Mr. Russell demonstrates that the three ele- 
ments of Christian worship, which he enumerates 
as “ worship, acquiescence and love,” can get along 
very well without God. For worship, God is not 
a necessary object. The object is “the ideal good 
which creative contemplation imagines.” Acqui- 
escence, in its turn, does not demand a God on 
whose Will we are dependent: “it consists in free- 
dom from anger and indignation and preoccupied 
grief.” Lastly, love, can exist very well in re- 
ligion without a God Who is Love, as St. John re- 
minds us: “‘in a religion which is not theistic, love 
of God is replaced by worship of the ideal good.” ® 

Religion then, in conclusion, must be said, ac- 
cording to Mr. Russell, “to derive its power from 
the sense of union with the universe which it is able 
to give.” Since God’s existence is denied, the new 
religion must be one which “ depends only on our- 
selves. ... . We with our ideals must stand alone, 
and conquer inwardly the world’s indifference.” ” 
It is man who matters in this subject of religion. 
“For in all things it is well to exalt the dignity of 
Man, by freeing him as far as possible from the 
tyranny of the non-human Power.” ” 

Such is the essence of religion as understood by 
Mr. Bertrand Russell, a conception in which re- 
ligion dispenses with God and puts man and ideals 
in His place. If it be the correct explanation of re- 

ST Tbid., Hi.) So. 69 [bid., p. 59. 

SS [hid.5 p. 86, 70 Tbid., p. 62. 


71 «Free Man’s Worship” in “ Mysticism and Logic,” 1925, p. 
46 ff. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE 39 


ligion, then Mr. Russell is right in saying “ Man 
worships at the shrine his own hands have made.” 


Religion according to Professors Croce and Gentile 


Not only is the modern philosophy of France, 
Germany, England, and America evolving a new 
religion which leaves no room for the God of 
reason, but even Italy, which so violently reacted 
against Naturalism, has also joined the ranks as 
if to make the demand universal. Italian philoso- 
phy like that of France, became tired of Positivism, 
and reacted against it in an Idealistic fashion as 
Aliotta has so well shown” and then finally de- 
veloped a philosophy of its own. 

The new thought, although Hegelian in inspira- 
tion, is not wholly so in its finished product, par- 
ticularly in so far as religion is concerned. Ac- 
cording to Hegel, it is only through a system of 
concepts that religion can be shown to be true and 
not by mere subjective intuitions or emotions. 
The inevitable conclusion is that religion is to be 
resolved into philosophy. 

There is not perfect agreement as to the exact 
manner in which religion is resolved into philoso- 
phy. For Croce™ spirit must be either theoretical 
or practical. If theoretical, it is either an intuition 
which is A‘sthetics, or a concept which is Logic; if 
practical, it is either useful, which is Economics, 
or Good which is Ethics. The point to be stressed 


72 “The Idealistic Reaction against Science,” 1914. 
73 “ Filosofia della Pratica,” 9th ed., 1923. ‘‘ Estetica come scienza 
dell? espressione e linguistica generale,” 5 * ediz., 1922. 


40 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


here is that there is no room for a specific religious 
element; religion is only a hybrid of the above men- 
tioned forms; the Kingdom of God becomes the 
Kingdom of Man; and religion becomes the Dialec- 
tics of Thought. 

Gentile’s view of religion agrees with Croce as 
far as the fundamental notion is concerned, namely 
that Religion is man contemplating his own spirit 
idealized. But while Croce tends towards distinc- 
tions, Gentile is on fire with Unity, and herein 
lies the difference. Gentile“ is more concerned 
with the theory of the Spirit as essentially a self- 
realizing act. The Spirit is always becoming aware 
of itself as a subject, then of itself as an object, and 
finally returning to itself and knowing itself as the. 
synthesis of both. Religion is that second moment 
in which the Spirit discovers itself as an object. 
The overwhelming sense of the otherness of the ob- 
ject blinds the mind to itself as subject. Hence 
man forgets himself, annihilates himself before his 
object, which now assumes, because of its abso- 
luteness, the very character of God. God then 
is the object taken apart from its relation to the 
subject. 

Further elaboration is unnecessary. The God of 
the new Italian religious philosophy is not objective 
to the thinker, but like that of Professor Alexander 
is a “creature” of Thought or Spirit; or, to para- 


74 Theory of Mind as Pure Act, “ Discorsi di Religione,” 1920. 
God for Croce and Gentile is not a Reality separate from the human 
spirits. It is the human spirit as conscious of its own identity with the 
absolute spirit. Man is God inasmuch as he is the world’s self-conscious- 
ness, 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 41 


phrase the words of Mr. Russell, “we worship at 
the shrine our own spirit has made.” 


Religion according to Professor Gerald B. Smith 


In an article entitled “ Is Theism essential to Re- 
ligion? ” ‘* Gerald Birney Smith, the Editor of the 
Journal of Religion, declares that Theism as the 
basis of religion no longer has a cogent appeal, and 
hence an entirely new concept of religion is neces- 
sary to fit in with the temper of the day. 

The negative side of the paper is devoted to the 
proof of the three following propositions: men can 
be good citizens without appealing to God; they 
can be good scientists without affirming Theism; 
and finally, they can be religious without a belief 
in God. 

First, politically, there has been a dissolution of 
the theological theory of politics. “In the experi- 
ence of modern nations it was found that the doc- 
trine of the divine right of the ruler could be too 
easily invoked to sustain a royal tyranny. The 
democratic movement which has inspired modern 
political movement has been based upon the pri- 
mary tenet of the rights of man.” The conse- 
quence of a struggle for democratic rights is the 
secularizing of politics. And in terms of practical 
experience, the secularization of government means 
that citizenship is complete without any distinc- 
tively religious requirements. An atheist has the 
same rights as a theist. “If, now, in our political 


15 Journal of Religion, Vol. 5, No. 4, July 1925. 
 Ibid., p. 358. 


42 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


practice, it makes no essential difference whether 
one is a theist or not, if one can be a good citizen 
without believing in God, theism comes to be a mat- 
ter of taste rather than a fundamental doctrine.” ” 

Secondly, as theism is not necessary for politics 
neither is it necessary for science. The old theo- 
logical supervision of science has passed into the 
background. It is the detail now rather than 
“speculations ” regarding reality which interests 
scientists. The conception of God in no way 
furthers the empirical method, and therefore is un- 
necessary for it. Furthermore “it is to be noted 
that scientists generally speak of religion rather 
than of God. Their belief in God, in so far as it 
persists at all, is a rather vague emotional inherit- 


99 78 


ance. Not only that, the advance of science 


shows non-theistic explanations of problems. 


“Epidemics are now averted by controlling sources 
of infection rather than by prayer. Material pros- 
perity is seen to depend on economic factors rather 
than on generalized moral attitudes.” In short, 
in the face of practical pluralism, the “appeal to 
God occupies a decreasing place in modern re- 
ligion.”’ 

Thirdly, men can be religious without Theism. 
Psychology has shown, Dr. Smith points out, that 
the fundamental realities in our religious experience 
are not ideas, but instinctive reactions of the human 
organism to the stimulus of environment. In 


7” Journal of Religion, Vol. 5, No. 4, July 1925. p. 359 
18 Tbid., p. 360. 19 [bid., p. 361. 


MODERN RELIGION—NEGATIVE 43 


other words “ religion exists first, theological ideas 
are secondary.” ** Just as the Babylonian religions 
_ outgrew a belief in their Shamash, for he was only 
a symbol of their ideals rather than an actual deity, 
so too the modern age is outgrowing the old tra- 
ditional notion of God. 

Dr. Smith leans kindly to the ideas of Professor 
FE. S. Ames who would correlate religion with the 
actual, scientific and social forces dominant in life. 
God becomes something in experience, or as this 
author puts it: “‘ The character of God will be found 
in the experienced reciprocity between man and his 
environment rather than in the realm of metaphysi- 
cal speculation.”** The belief in God means 
that there may be found, not merely within the 
circle of human society, but also in the non-human 
environment on which we are dependent, a quality 
of the cosmic process akin to the quality of our own 
spiritual life. ‘Through communion with this 
qualitative aspect of the cosmic process human life 
attains an experience of dignity, and reinforcement 
of spiritual power.” * “Religion for men who 
think in this fashion will consist in a great mystic 
experiment rather than in the acceptance of a theo- 
logical system . . . God will be very real to the 
religious man, but his reality will be interpreted in 
terms of social reciprocity with an as yet inade- 
quately defined cosmic support of values, rather 
than in terms of theistic creatorship and control.” 


80 Tbid., p. 362. 8? [bid., p. 375+ 
61 Jbid., Pp. 373- 88 Ibid. 


44 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Some Modern Definitions of Religion 


The foregoing exposition of religion has quite 
clearly proved to us that today religion is conceived 
in other terms than those of God and man. Even 
the word “God,” in some cases, is ignored; in 
others it takes on a new content. A few definitions 
of religion extracted from current writings bear 
out this point. 

““Indeed the existence of a supreme being as a 
person external to ourselves and to the world, like 
a magnified human creature, is not affirmed by the 
religious consciousness, and if it were known to be 
a fact, would have no bearing on religion.” ™ 

“It is probably true that it is best to avoid the 
term ‘God’ in purely philosophical writing, just as 
in the critical discussion of poetry, we need not re- 
fer to the Muses.” *° 

“T wish you here to agree to my giving the name 
of God to the sum of the forces acting in the cos- 
mos as perceived and grasped by human mind. 
We can therefore now say that God is one, but 
that though one, has several aspects.” *° 

“Though the traditional content of the term 
‘God’ is to be denied, the value of that term is not 
to be denied. Religion needs that word although 
it needs to overhaul its meaning.” ™ 


8¢ B. Bosanquet, “‘ Value and Destiny of the Individual,” 1913, 
Pp. 254. 

85 J. Mackenzie, “ God as Love and Di and Creative Power,” 
Hibbert Journal. Vol. XXIV, no. 2, p. 19 

86 Julian S. Huxley, “ Science and Religion,” edited by F, S. Marvin, 
1923, Chap. XI. 

87 Julian Huxley, “ Essays of a Biologist,” p. 235. 


— 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 4s 


“Religion is an emotion resting on a conviction 
of a harmony between ourselves and the universe 
at large.” * 

“Religion is the force or faculty prompting to 
action in accordance with the highest ideals having 
reference to the future of the individual and the 
race,’,°° 

“ Religion is due to the interplay of many forces, 
the family, the community, the priest, the bishop, 
and other children. ... ‘The religious experience 
is best described as the experience of the ideal, the 
realization of value which comes in an exalted emo- 
tional moment that makes us one with our kind, at 
least with the best of our kind, who might include 
the whole of them.” *° 

Religion is “the pure embodiment of the prac- 
tical motive —that is, the highly interested desire 
for a place of action which will secure the maximum 
of good fortune from the environment as a 
whole.” ” 

“ Religion is a projection in the roaring loom of 
time of a concentration or unified complex of psy- 
chical values.” * 

** Whether God exists or not, is not important to 
the nature of religion.” * 

“Religion is the projection and pursuit of ideal 


88 T. McTaggart, “ Some Dogmas of Religion,” 1906, p. 3. 
89 G. M. Irvine, “ Churches, Religion and Progress,” pp. 13, 18. 
90 Ellsworth Faris, Journal of Religion, Vol. VI, No. 3, May 1926, 
y B4t 
7 91 Al. Hoernle, Harvard Theol. Review, Vol. XI, No. 2, April 
1918. R.B. Perry, “ Philosophical Tendencies.” p. 29. 
92 Jos. A. Leighton, “ Man and Cosmos,” 1922, p. 545. 
98 R, Eucken, “Truths of Religion,” p. 129. 


46 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


_ personal relations with the universe and man... . 
Because it is a process of projection and pursuit, re- 
ligion is an ever moving process in the direction of 
complete personal adjustment and control in man’s 
total environment.” * 

“In its simplified element religion is thus found 
to be the expression of man’s mental attitude to- 
ward the unknown which is not capable of being 
known by any method of investae available at 
the time.” * 

*‘ Any reasoned appreciation of life is —a relig- 
ion even. though there are no conventional re- 
ligious elements in it.” °° 

“ Immanentism, the conception that God is life- 
force, only ‘personal’ in so far as realizing itself 
through successive forms of life, cuts the ground 
from under the feet of the Christian appeal; for 
where there is not felt to be any distinction, there 
can be no desire of union.” ” 

“The central dogma of the Christian religion, 
finds no support in science. It cannot be said that 
either doctrine is essential to religion, since neither 
is found in Buddhism. . . . Wein the West have 
come to think of them as the irreducible minimum 
of theology. No doubt people will continue to en- 
tertain these beliefs, because they are pleasant, just 
as it is pleasant to think ourselves virtuous and our 


94 Edwin E. Aubrey, “The Nature of Religion,” Journal of 
Religion, 1925, pp. 189-91. 

95 G. M. Irvine, “ Churches, Religion and Progress,” pp. 13-18. 

96 G. Santayana, “Reason in Religion,” p. 6. 

97 Thomas J. Hardy, “ The Present Predicament of Christianity,” 
Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1925, Vol. XXIV, No. 1, p. 65. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 47 


enemies wicked. But for my part I cannot see any 
ground for either.” ** 

“Religion is the most complete and full-orbed 
expression of this striving toward action with the 
widest and fullest environment.” ” 

“ Religion is, then, man’s sense of the disposition 
of the universe to himself.’ **° 

“God is neither an entity nor an ideal, but al- 
ways a relation of entity to ideal: Reality regarded 
from the standpoint of its favorableness or unfavor- 
ableness, to human life, and prescribing for the lat- 
ter the propriety of a certain attitude.” *” 

“ Religion is not mere conformity to moral law, 
it is an espousal of moral ideals, a dedication of the 
heart, a loyal devotion, the perpetual renewal of a 
right spirit within us.” *” 

“Center of religion is cosmic fortune of 
values.” *°° 

“ Religion is loyalty and co-operation in the ef- 
fort to attain the socially approved values in- 
volved in the ideal of the satisfactory life.” *°* 

* Religion is the glorious challenge of human 
life for the mastery of the planet; the loyal pursuit 
of the vision of the complete life through the 
ages.” 105 


98 Bertrand Russell, “ What I Believe,” 1925, p. 13. 

89 H. W. Wieman, Journal of Religion, May 1927, p. 307. 

100 Ralph B. Perry, “The Approach to Philosophy,” 1908, p. 66. 

101 Thid., p. 88. 

102 Durant Drake, “A Definition of Religion,” Journal of Re- 
ligion, March 1927, p. 124. 

103 W. G. Everett, “ Moral Values,” 1918, p. 302. 

104 A. E. Haydon, Journal of Religion, March 1927, p. 127. 

205° bid., p. 133; 


48 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


“Faith in God is synonymous with the brave 
hope that the universe is friendly to the ideals of 
man 99 106 


Psychological Negations of the Traditional Object 
of Religion 


Psychological arguments are not wanting to bol- 
ster up the contemporary negation of God as the 
object of religion. In making such an assertion 
there is grave danger of being misunderstood. Psy- 
chology, as such, does not hold nor even make for 
such a position any more than does modern physics 
or modern biology; it merely attempts to describe 
the by-products of religion, its emotions, its states 
and its reactions. In doing this it has rendered 
much service to the proper understanding of relig- — 
ion. In the words of Professor Flournoy: “ Psy- 
chology neither rejects nor affirms the transcenden- 
tal existence of the religious objects; it simply 
ignores that problem as being outside its field.” *” 
Dr. James Bislett Pratt, of Williams College, is an 
American psychologist who has well understood the 
boundaries and frontiers of his science when he 
writes “My purpose is to describe the religious 
consciousness, and to do so without having any 
point of view... . My aim in short has been purely 
descriptive, and my method purely empirical. Like 
other men I have my own theories about the philos- 
ophy of religion, but I have made unremitting ef- 


106 A, E. Haydon, Journal of Religion, March 1927, p. 128. __ 
107 “ Principes de la Psychologie Religieuse,” in Archies de Psy- 
chologie, Vol. Il, pp. 37-41. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 49 


forts to describe the religious consciousness without 
undue influence from my philosophical theories, but 
merely by going to experience and writing down 
what I find.” *** Even better still has Dr. Gerald 
B. Phelan outlined the frontiers of psychology and 
philosophy of religion. In an excellent paper read 
at the American Catholic Philosophical Associa- 
tion, he said: “ When the psychologist follows the 
methods of his science in dealing with the phenom- 
ena of religious life as they affect the individual 
mind and the social group, he is quite within the 
confines of his territory and philosophy should look 
across at him smiling her approval on his energetic 
efforts. Only when the empirical investigator sur- 
reptitiously appropriates the findings of philosophy 
and distorts them to accommodate the findings of 
his science should the voice of Dame Philosophy be 
heard in protest. ... Whatever explanations he 
may offer, the authority of the psychologist ex- 
tends no further than the data of his science, which 
being definitely phenomenological, furnish no 
grounds for conclusions about the transcen- 
dental.” *” 

If psychologists remained psychologists there 
would be no reason for introducing them here, 
but unfortunately there is often an itch among 
them, as there is among physicists and mathemati- 
cians, to become philosophers and to discourse 

108 « The Religious Consciousness,” 2d ed., 1927, p. Vil. 

109 «“ Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting,” 1926, pp. 85, 86. 


Cf. p. 17 of “Feeling Experience and Its Modalities” by the same 
author, London, 1925. 


50 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


about the nature of God and His existence. When 
this inclination so masters them that their descrip- 
tions become explanations, then they become 
philosophers of religion and as such must be 
treated. 

There is probably no psychologist of religion who 
has so far over-stepped the limits of his science as 
Professor James Leuba. His particular theories 
of conversion and mysticism and the like do not 
interest us, but his denial of anything beyond psy- 
chological causes of religion is of vital interest. 
There is no misunderstanding his position. He 
comes out very clearly against Flournoy’s state- 
ment that “ Psychology neither rejects nor affirms 
the transcendental existence of the religious ob- 
jects” ; and asserts that such a position nullifies 
the science of which he is an exponent. “The prin- 
ciple,” he writes, “ of irrelevance of science to the 
transcendent, shields the cardinal belief of the es- 
tablished religions only if their gods are transcen- 
dental objects. In taking for granted that there are 
such objects, an error has been committed and 
grave confusion has been introduced in the discus- 
sion of the relation of science to religion.” Very 
justly, he adds, that if the object of religion is a god 
whose source is in the naive interpretation of phe- 
nomena then religion is not outside science. But 
he believes every notion of God to be such an in- 
terpretation. “Should there be no ground of be- 
lief other than physical phenomena and inner ex- 
periences, then, for those who are acquainted with 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE © 51 


the modern scientific conception, there would be 
no belief in God.” **° 

It is quite evident that for Professor Leuba there 
is very little reason for introducing the traditional 
notion of God into religion, for that notion has since 
been dissolved by scientific study. If there were 
super-human beings, their existence, he tells us, 
should have become increasingly evident. ‘“‘ Yet 
the converse is apparently true; the supernatural 
world of the savage has become a natural world to 
the civilized man; the miraculous of yesterday is 
the explicable of today. In religious lives acces- 
sible to psychological investigation, nothing requir- 
ing the admission of super-human influences has 
been found. There is nothing, for example, in the 
life of the great Spanish mystic whose celebrity is 
being renewed by contemporary psychologists — 
not a desire, not a feeling, not a thought, not a 
vision, not an illumination, that can seriously make 
us look to transcendental causes.” *™ 

That Professor Leuba means these shafts of 
naturalism to be the undoing of traditional religion 
is quite clear from the following passage: “The 
evils bred by the traditional conception of God may 
be called by the general name of ‘ otherworldliness.’ 
It would be difficult to evaluate the harm done to 
humanity in the past by the conviction that the real 
destination of man is the World to Come, and 
equally difficult to estimate the harm done by the 

110 “ The Psychology of Religious Mysticism,” 1925, pp. 300, 302, 


04. 
111 «Psychological Study of Religion,” p. 272. 


52 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


conviction that for its ethical improvement society 
is dependent upon a personal God. If these evils 
are of lesser magnitude now than in the past, it is 
because the traditional belief has lost some of its 
ancient potency, and because the sense of respon- 
sibility of the individual for the natural and the 
spiritual welfare of society has grown correspond- 
ingly greater. In order that we may come to a full 
realization that he and he alone is his brother’s 
keeper, it is necessary that man should entirely 
give up the belief in personal super-human causa- 
tion. Divided responsibility works no better in re- 
ligion than in business.”*? “It need hardly be 
said here that the abandonment of the belief in a 
personal God and in personal immortality, though 


it involves the disappearance of existing religions, 


need not bring to an end religious life.” *” 


The God-less religion of this psychologist is de- 
fined as follows: “ Religion is that part of human 
experience in which man feels himself in relation 
with the power of psychic nature, usually personal 
powers, and makes use of them. ... In its ob- 
jective aspect, active religion consists then, of atti- 
tudes, practices, rites, ceremonies, institutions; in 
its subjective aspect, it consists of desires, emotions 
and ideas, instigating and accompanying these ob- 
jective manifestations. ‘The reason for the exist- 
ence of religion is not the objective truth of its 
conception, but its biological value.” ** 


112 « Psychology of Religious Mysticism,” pp. 329-330. 
118 J. H. Leuba, “ The Belief in God and Immortality,” 1916, p. X. 
114 “ Psychological Study of Religion,” pp. 52, 53. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE _ 53 


While Professor Leuba rules God out of court 
and relegates such belief to non-psychological ages 
of human existence, there are others who are more 
inclined to exclude God from religion altogether by 
reducing Him to a psychic state. ‘The theory of 
projection” is the popular fashion of doing this 
among the latter group of psychological-philoso- 
phers. Professor A. G. Tansley, for example, makes 
religion God-less by making God a mental pro- 
jection: 

“In a primitive state of culture man projects 
parts of his own personality upon the forces of 
nature and thus personifies and defies them... . 
At a later state of development the process of pro- 
jection is gradually simplified, in accordance with 
the persistent need of unification, and finally crys- 
talized into a dualism, a personification of good 
and evil, of what is beneficial or harmful to the 
human race, and instead of polytheism we have the 
antithesis of God and the Devil. ... At a later 
stage still we have a further unification; the Devil 
is banished from the cosmology, and God is repre- 
sented as responsible for everything — even for the 
evil in the human heart. . . . So far God is essen- 
tially a social God, a concentrated projection of all 
the qualities useful to the herd in a supreme super- 
natural personality —the supreme herd leader of 
humanity, just as the tribal gods were the tribal 
leaders.” *° 


115 « The New Psychology and its Relation to Life,” 7th ed., 1922. 
W. R. Matthews while denying that the idea of God is a pure pro- 
jection believes that it should be retained because it has a “ survival 


54 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD > 


Sociological Negations of the Traditional Object 
of Religion 


In addition to the purely metaphysical or psycho- 
logical explanations of religion there is yet another 
which may be called the sociological or the humani- 
tarian. Among European thinkers this explana- 
tion takes a double form: either that of Durkheim 
for whom God is “a divinized society ” or that of 
Wundt for whom God is the term which represents 
the values of life as estimated either by the folk 
or the community. Professor Alfred Hoernle, who 
knows so well the currents of contemporary philos- 
ophy, describes the humanitarian view as follows: 
“ For the ineffective love of a supernatural or even 
non-existent God it seeks to substitute the effective 
love of actual men and women. From preoccupa- 
tion with the salvation of his soul in a life after 
death, it seeks to turn man to the service of his 
kind in this life. It aims at making the energy of 


value ”: “This idea, no less than the idea of nature, has value for 
life, and has helped man to gain command of the circumstances in 
which his existence is cast.” ‘The Psychological Approach to Re- 
ligion,” 1925, p. 21; cf. Jung, “ The Psychology of the Unconscious”; 
T. W. Pym, “ Psychology and the Christian Life,” 1921, Chaps. 2, 3. 
“The psycho-analyst is satisfied with the theory that religious beliefs 
are produced by disused, displaced and projected libido.” ‘ The ‘ one 
God? satisfied the narcissistic craving of the beloved Ego for an om- 
nipotent projection for its own adoration.” Cavendish Moxon, M.A. 
(Oxon), ‘Freudian Essays on Religion and Science,” 1925, pp. 18, 
20. “Religion is primarily emotional and therefore is in the broadest 
sense of sex-origin.” §. Swisher, “ Religion and the New Psychology,” 
1923, p. 19. J. Cyril Flower, “ Psychological Studies of Religious 
Questions,” 1924, p. 224 ff. “The constitutive character of religion 
lies in the psychical’s successful attempt to assert itself physically.” 
Jacques Cohen, “ Religion,” 1923, p. 35. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE - 55 


religion available in the cause of human progress, 
for the fight against disease, poverty, ignorance, 
crime. It preaches a crusade against remediable 
ills in the cause of a better future for the human race 
on this earth.” **° 

‘There are few contemporary thinkers who have 
done more to further this natural kind of religion 
than Professor E. S. Ames of the University of 
Chicago. He believes that the Christian concep- 
tion of a future life is gradually losing its hold on 
mankind. “At last religion has come,” he says, 
“to reckon with the fact that its highest quest is not 
for a supernatural order but just for natural good- 
ness in the largest and fullest measure. . . . What 
then is the goal of religion? ... The goal of re- 
ligion is the fulfillment of the normal duties and 
opportunities of life as we experience it, with sym- 
pathy and idealism and passionately unselfish de- 
SOLON ait 

The notion of worshipping a Supreme Being in 
another world is therefore quite out of the question. 
It smacks of the “ adoration and flattery such as 
were formerly given to tyrants and despots.” ** 
“In our democracies men do not bow themselves 
to the ground nor prostrate themselves even before 
the mightiest individuals.” *° 

More or less the same sentiments are expressed by 
Professor Charles A . Ellwood of the University of 
Missouri. “ The crisis in the religious world,” he 


116 “ Matter, Life, Mind, God,” 1923, p. 176. 
117 “ The New Orthodoxy,” 1925, pp. 93, 101. 
418 Thid.; Pp. 117. 119. bid.) ps £234 


56 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


writes, “has been brought about by the failure of 
existing religion to adapt itself to two outstanding 
facts in our civilization—science and democ- 
racy.” *”° He believes that a religious revolution is 
in the air, and that it is concerned with a transition 
from ethical monotheism to a scientific and social 
conception of religion. And “the real religious 
problem of our society is to secure the general ac- 
ceptance of a religion adapted to the requirements 
of continuous progress toward an ideal, consisting of 
all humanity.” *” “Service of God must consist in 
service of man.”*” The traditional notion of God 
will then be done away with. Professor Ellwood 
calls ita Santa Claus notion. “ ‘The autocratic con- 
ception of God, as a force outside the universe, who 
rules by arbitrary will both physical nature and 
human history, will be replaced by the conception 
of a spirit immanent in nature and in humanity, 
which is gradually working out the supreme good in 
the form of an ideal society consisting of all human- 
ity. And since service of God is in reality service 
of man, there will be sin in this new religion of 
democracy; it will be a failure to serve mankind. 
In other words it will be “ disloyalty to society.” *” 
“Religion means the consecration of individual life, 
at first for love and spiritual ends, but finally for 
humanitarian ends.” *** 


120 “The Reconstruction of Religion,” 1922, p. 2. 

OST bid. 0. 164: 

122 Ibid., p. 100, 

123 Tbhid., pp. 139) 143. 

124 Tbid., p. 45. “This new spirit, forming itself, as it were, 
upon the restless sea of humanity, will, without doubt, determine the 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE 57 


Professor R. W. Sellars expresses similar ideas on 
the nature of religion, believing that “religion must 
be separated from the other worldly pull of the 
traditional theologies and be sanely grounded in the 
outlook of modern knowledge. ... The Human- 
ist’s religion, is the religion of one who says yea to 
the life here and now, of one who is self-reliant and 
fearless, intelligent and creative. ... Its Goal is 
the mastery of things that they may become serv- 
ants and instrumentalities to man’s spiritual com- 
radeship.” *”* 

Mr. Thomas J. Hardy, noting this growing relig- 
ion in which mankind is both worshipper and 
worshipped, has said “If immanentism means the 
apotheosis of Man there are few who need much 
converting. ... Man is emerging from the cum- 
brous trappings of Divinity and ‘the Service of 


future sense of God and destiny. ‘The deistic conception of an age 
now completely past, that God is some distant monarch, will fade 
into the darkness with the social system which gave it rise; and so- 
ciety as a federal union, in which each individual and every form of 
human association shall find free and full scope for a more abundant 
life, will be the large figure from which is projected the conception 
of God in whom we live and move and have our being.” (Robert A. 
Woods, Democracy: A New Unfolding of Human Power, a chapter in 
“ Studies in Philosophy and Psychology,” 1906. ‘Society, democratic 
from end to end, can brook no such radical class distinction as that 
between a supreme being favored with eternal and absolute perfection 
and the man of beings doomed to the lower ways of imperfect struggle. 
It is the large figure out of which is projected the conception of the 
God that is ourselves, in whom and of whom we literally are; the God 
that, in every act and intention, we, with all our countless fellows are 
realising. . . . It isa God that in one respect is in the making, growing 
with the growth of the world; suffering and sinning and conquering 
with it; a God, in short, that zs the world in the spiritual unity of its 
mass-life.” H. A. Overstreet, “The Democratic Conception of God,” 
Hibbert Journal, Vol. XI, p. 410. 
125 «The Next Step in Religion,” 1918, pp. 211, 212, 217. 


58 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Man,’ rejected in its doctrinaire presentment, has 
become the Established Religion.” **° 

The foregoing survey of the field of philosophy of 
religion, though it does betray a great want of uni- 
formity of teaching, does nevertheless very clearly 
reveal a tendency to dispense with God as the goal 
of religion and the end of life. The term “God” 
may still be retained, and in some cases is, but it is 
emptied of all the content ascribed to it by the great- 
est minds of the past. In other words, the conclu- 
sion to be drawn from the philosophical theories 
just presented is not that there is no God in modern 
religion, but only that God as traditionally under- 
stood is no longer considered the object of religion. 
The reasons for such a conclusion, as we have seen, 
are generally either philosophical, psychological or 
sociological, but underlying them all is the inability 
to reconcile the old concept of God and religion with 


126 «The Present Predicament,” Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1925, Vol. 
24, No. 1, pp. 66, 69. “The new faith will be neither Buddhist nor 
Christian, nor Mohammedan; it will be an outcome of the wants, the 
hopes and the aspirations of these our times and the near future; it will 
involve the fraternal love of man to all beings.” C. A. F. Rhys Davids, 
D.Litt., ‘Old Creeds and New Needs,” 1923, p. 178. ‘“ The object 
of humanistic religion is the enhancement of the human estate... . 
The old religion judges man by his contribution to the gods; humanism 
judges the gods by their contribution to man . . . we are loyal to our 
ideas of right and wrong, to our ideas of value, not in order to 
measure up to an ultimate standard but in order to promote human 
welfare. . . .” Curtis W. Reese, 1926, pp. 17, 23, 35. Among other 
interpretations of religion which reduce religion to a purely human 
thing is the historical, e.g., Alfred W. Martin, “The World’s Great 
Religions and the Religion of the Future,” 1921. E. Washburn Hop- 
kins, Ph.D., “ Origin and Evolution of Religion,” 1923, writes, “ Every 
religion is a product of human evolution and has been conditioned by 
social environment.” p. 1. A. N. Whitehead, “ Religion in the 
Making,” 1926, Chap. II. 


MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE — 59 


the latest discoveries of science. This conclusion 
is, Of course, negative, and tells us nothing positive 
of the content of modern religion. A more interest- 
ing inquiry is the nature of the substitute offered 
and this is the burden of the following chapter. 


CHAPTER IT 


MODERN RELIGION IN ITS POSITIVE ASPECT 


HILE it is a difficult task to group the 
multiple and varied theories of relig- 
ion which are now seeing the light of 

day, under some specific heading, it does neverthe- 
less seem true that they are all quite agreed in 
regarding values as the object of religion. The 
varied and colorful interpretations of God which 
were substituted for the traditional notion now 


merge on a common ground: God is subordinated, _ 


at least in some way, to the supreme task of con- 
serving values. It is true that for some, God still 
remains the object of religion, but only in relation 
to values. Thus Professor Whitehead, for example, 
although admitting the necessity of some “ har- 
monizer” or “principle of concretion” in this 
world of relations, makes God subserve value. 
“The purpose of God,” he writes, “is the attain- 
ment of value in the temporal world.” * 

There is no danger of exaggerating the place 
which the philosophy of values holds in the world 
today. Only a few decades ago the term “ Value” 
would have suggested nothing more than a term 
of economics, signifying the price of things. “The 


1 “Religion in the Making,” p. 100. 
60 


MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE 61 


value of a thing is just as much as it will bring.” 
Now the term is applied in the field of education, 
_art, religion and all the aspects of human life.? Pro- 
fessor Pringle Pattison says that “ At the present 
time philosophy is carried on more explicitly in 
terms of value than at any other time.”* To take 
another of the vast host of testimonies to this fact, 
Professor D. S. Robinson affirms that: “ Since the 
time of Kant all progressive theologians have shifted 
the emphasis away from the abstract philosophical 
arguments for the existence of God to the searching 
question: What value does God have in human 
experience? ”* ‘The philosophy of value up to the 
present day has been a by-product of thought; now 
it is the essential. Writing in 1885, Herman Lotze 
saw the possibility of its development when he 
wrote in reference to esthetics and ethics: “ and 
for these two investigations a third common to 
both may be conceived, which has hitherto never 
been carried out, namely, an investigation con- 
cerning the nature of all the determinations of 
value.” ° 
But what is the reason for the popularity of a 
philosophy of value? Only a few have attempted 
to answer this question. Professor R. B. Perry and 
Professor J. S. Mackenzie are notable exceptions. 
The former believes that the philosophy of value is 


2 J. S. Mackenzie, “ Ultimate Values,” 1926, p. 13. 

3 “The Idea of God,” p. 39. 

4 “The God of the Liberal Christian,” 1926, p. 118. 

5 “Griindzuge der Logik und Encyclopaidie der Philosophie,” 
quoted by Perry, “ General Theory of Value,” p. 5. 


62 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


the culminating phase of the modern scientific 
movement in which science not only studies nature 
but man, and the study of man means the study of 
his values. ‘The old Baconian program of science 
which promised man conquest over the powers of 
nature has given place to the new program which 
promises power through the conquest of himself. 
Sciences which before studied only the physical 
world now include man within their scope; biology, 
for example, now studies the “descent of man.” 
“The theory of value belongs to this general intel- 
lectual movement—shares its aspirations, and 
participates in its efforts.” It is really an attempt 
to apply science to life, and to discover that age-old 
problem of living together with a minimum of 
friction and a maximum of mutual aid.® 

Professor Perry gives a still more interesting ex- 
planation of the importance of the philosophy of 
values. It is founded on the contrast between the 
outlook of the ancient and medieval world and 
that of the modern world. The fact is that in the 
modern world there has been such a multiplication 
of diverse objects, thanks to the development of in- 
dustry and commerce, that the needs and the wants 
of man are constantly increasing. What our grand- 
parents looked upon as luxuries, are necessities for 
us. The standard of living has mounted; what once 
was a luxury is now a need, and what is presently a 
luxury will some day be a necessity. Coupled with 
this vast increase of values there has grown a great 


§ “General Theory of Values,” pp. 12, 13. 


MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE = 63 


confidence in the attainability of these things. Men 
are becoming more certain that the world is at their 
service and that as time passes on newer and better 
conveniences will reveal themselves which will 
make life better and more worth living. ‘The world 
is a good place to live in. “There is something in 
the modern spirit that prevents a man’s washing his 
hands of the whole matter and retiring from the 
world.” 

Set now in contrast with this modern spirit is that 
of the ancient or the medieval world. The idea of 
the ancient world was that man should be content 
with what he has. Stoics proclaimed the doctrine 
of disillusionment. The medieval world continued 
to do the same but introduced a new element which 
was not found in paganism; namely, the doctrine 
of the future life where the losses of time would be 
compensated by the gains of eternity. There was 
still a common element between the two, namely the 
disproportion between man’s desires and his powers 
and the consequent need of renunciation. Its wis- 
dom, continues Professor Perry, “was pervaded 
with a sense of doom, of ironic fate, of incurable 
failure, or of divine intervention. It taught men to 
believe that worldly attainments could never be 
more than provisional. . . .” But the triumphs of 
modern science have, for better or for worse, 
resulted in a sort of re-illusionment of the modern 
European. He proposes to increase production 
rather than reduce consumption. He has under- 
taken an aggressive campaign in the open... . If 


64 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


he remembers the fate which overtook the Tower of | 
Babel he attributes it to ignorance of modern engi- 
neering. If he summons faith to his aid it is not to 
compensate resignation, but to invigorate his effort 
or confirm his illusions. sf 

Hence the broad difference between the theory of 
value in the contemporary and European sense, and 
the theory of value in the earlier and non-European 
sense. Value today springs from a kind of embar- 
rassment of riches. How shall a man choose from 
what is offered him? How shall their conflict be re- 
duced or eliminated? The problem, in other words, 
is that “ of establishing a principle of selection and 
a method of reconciliation by which order and har- 
mony shall be brought out of a bewildering chaos 
and a confusion of values.”* Since the world has — 
changed its outlook on life, and is more bent on — 
enlarging man’s powers than reducing his desires, 
a new theory of values is necessary to adjust prop- 
erly the details of the new vision. 

Value, in some way or other, has become the 
primary object of religion, regardless of the kind of 
God any contemporary philosopher may ‘create. 
Those who are well versed in contemporary relig- 
ious philosophy will recall the frequency with which 
Hoffding’s definition of religion is quoted.? It 
would be interesting to know who has not quoted 
it. H6ffding has defined religion as “faith in the 
conservation of values,” or “‘ the conviction that no 


T Od. cit. p. 13. 
8 Op. cit. pp. 14-16. 
® J. S. Mackenzie, “ Ultimate Values,” 1924, p. 172. 


MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE — 65 


value perishes out of the world.” *® Windelbrand, 
who is no less an authority,sums up the present 
philosophical situation in these words: “ We do 
not so much expect from philosophy what it was 
formerly supposed to give, a theoretic scheme of the 
world, a synthesis of the results of the separate 
sciences, or of transcending them on lines of its 
own, a scheme harmoniously complete in itself; 
what we expect from philosophy today is reflection 
on those permanent values which have their foun- 
dation in a higher spiritual reality above the chang- 
ing interests of the times.” ” 

One might go on through the field of contempo- 
rary philosophy seeking positive definitions of re- 
ligion and in the end would find they would be 
variations of Hoffding. Thus Professor E. G. 
Spaulding finds in religion “‘the factor of value, of 
something that is of worth to the individual, of 
something that means to him betterment and good- 
ness.”*” “The essence of religion,” according to 
Viscount Haldane, “is the claim that the world has 
value.” * 

But what is value? While contemporary philos- 
ophy agrees that religion is destined for the conser- 
vation of values, there is not a perfect agreement 
as to what constitutes value. Professor Whitehead, 


10 «Philosophy of Religion,” English translation, p. 6. 

11 “Die Philosophie im Deutschen Geistesleben des 1gten Jahr- 
hunderts,” 1909, p. 119. 

12 «“ Christianity and Modern Thought,” foreword by Ralph G. 
Gabriel. Chap. 4; Psychology of Religion by Professor Spaulding, 
oe 
13 “The Reign of Relativity,” 1921, p. 305; cf. W. K. Wright, 
“ A Student’s Philosophy of Religion,” 1922, p. 41. 


66 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


for example, defines it as “ the intrinsic reality of an 
event.” ** Meinong, on the contrary, says the value 
of an object lies in the total reaction of the subject 
in terms of the feeling aroused by the judgment or 
supposition of its existence or non-existence.” Pro- 
fessor John Dewey tells us that “value is consti- 
tuted by interest, liking, vital bias,” ** which is 
something similar to Professor R. B. Perry’s notion 
that value is intelligible in function of interest.” 
Professor E. S Brightman likes the psychological 
explanation and defines it as “ what is liked or de- 
sired or approved in the light of our highest 
ideals.”** ‘‘ Value is at any stage the distinction 
between what on that level is fitting and what is 
defeated in the contrast or the struggle with it.” ” 

And so one might go on elaborating definitions. 
Ultimately some classification would have to be 
made. ‘This classification might be based on the 
distinction between objective and subjective values, 
or between instrumental and intrinsic values, or 
else a classification founded on the several sciences 
which would give such values as ethical, moral, ar- 
tistic and the like. While admitting the validity of 
all these classifications and divisions, there is yet 
another one which far better serves the purpose 
this work has in view. It is a classification in 

14 “ Science and the Modern World,” p. 136. 

15 “ Ueber Annahmen,” 1910, p. 182. 

16 “Valuation and Experimental Knowledge,” Phil. Review, Vol. 
XXXI, 1922, p. 334. 

17 “ General Theory of Value,” 1926, Chap. 5. 


18 Professor S. Alexander, “ Religious Values,” 1925, p. 15. 
19 “ Space, Time and Deity,” Vol. 2, p. 410. 


MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE = 67 


answer to a problem which has been well expressed 
by Professor E. S. Brightman: “Can we give a 
complete account of what religious values mean 
merely in terms of our psychological life, our actual 
or possible immediate experience, or does the mean- 
ing of our religious experience depend on our rela- 
tion to a real order which is more and other than our 
human life?” * In other words, is God necessary 
for the conservation of values? 

There is no violence done to the philosophy of 
value in classifying its various schools according 
to their answer to this question, for here we are not 
taking sides, but merely treating values in relation 
to religion. In this connection it may be said that 
there are two groups of Value-Philosophers, one 
holding that God is necessary as the ground of 
values; the other either ignoring God or denying 
His necessity as their foundation. 


1. First Group of Value-Philosophers 


In his work, “ Moral Values and the Idea of 
God,” which may be said to be the finest contribu- 
tion contemporary philosophy has made to the 
problem of value, Professor R. S. Sorley gives a very 
orderly and coherent background for values. He 
holds that the mind has a double interest, first that 
of interest in the individual, the other that of in- 
terest in universals. Natural sciences study the 
universals; the historical and moral sciences study 
the individuals. In other words, natural sciences 


20 “ Religious Values,” p. 103. 


68 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


study causes and moral sciences study values, be- 
cause values are essentially personal. There is ob- 
jectivity in both spheres. Ethical principles are as 
valid for persons as physical principles are valid for 
material things. 

There is no absolutely independent unit among 
the objects of experience; reality is known to us as 
a whole. The problem is to understand this whole, 
for each thing is a part of a great whole. Reality 
includes diversity. The problem then is how are - 
these diversities reconciled into a whole, i.e., the 
diversities in the realm of causes and the diversities 
in the realm of ends. The two meet in man and 
there seem to be in conflict. 

From this conflict there arises a difficulty which 
may be put in the form of two questions. Why do 
persons realize their ideals so imperfectly? and why 
is the causal system so indifferent to them? 

The answer to the first is Freedom; the answer 
to the second is Purpose. 

“‘ How is it that persons do not realize the moral 
order of the universe? and the answer is that moral 
values can be realized by free beings only; that 
freedom is necessary for goodness . . . andthatthe 
world would be a less noble and worthy event than 
it is if it did not contain the values which can be 
realized only by free beings, and therefore cannot 
be purchased except by the gift which makes evil 
possible as well as good.” * 

Why is the world apparently so indifferent to 


21 “ Moral Values and the Idea of God,” p. 503. 


MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE — 69 


our ideals? This difficulty “can be explained only 
by the interpretation of the world as a purposive 
system. ... We must postulate purpose in the 
world as well as freedom in man. ‘The world with 
its order of natural law cannot be explained from 
its present appearance only; not only its justifica- 
tion but also its explanation depends upon the final 
issue; and we must have regard to the ends which it 
is adapted to serve. ... The order of nature in- 
tends a result which is not found at any particular 
stage in the process of existence. It requires an 
idea of the process as a whole and of the moral order 
to which nature is being made subservient. It 
means therefore intelligence and the will to good 
as well as the ultimate source of power. In this way 
the recognition of the moral order and of its relation 
to nature and man, involves the acknowledgment of 
the Supreme Mind or God as the ground of all 
reality.” ” 

Although arguing that the “idea of value is fun- 
damental,” ** Professor Sorley does not say that 
God is good because there is goodness in things. 
“We have not argued,” he writes, “that God is good 
because we find goodness in man, but that he is 
good because we find the idea of goodness to be 
valid for that universal order which we are trying 
to understand.” ** In this same favorable connec- 
tion must be mentioned Professor E. S. Brightman, 
who is thoroughly unsympathetic to any theory of 
values which outlaws God. ‘“ Man-made values are 


22 Thid., p. 503-504. 23 [bid., p. 487. 24 Ibid., p. 488. 


70 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


not only unsatisfying, but they are groundless. 
God alone can give fixity and permanency to values 
and hence is to be defined as “‘ The Supreme Value 
of the Universe.” ” | 

The problem of the foundation of values has been 
taken up by another justly celebrated moral phi- 
losopher, Professor Hastings Rashdall in his two 
volume work: “The Theory of Good and Evil.” *® 
Well done in its criticism of psychological and ra- 
tional utilitarianism and the Kantian categorical 
imperative, it is less satisfying in its constructive 
part. His own theory is that goods of different 
kinds (pleasure, virtue and the like) are capable of 
quantitative reckoning and admit of being meas- 
ured in respect to their ultimate value. But there 
must be some ultimate postulate for morality, 
otherwise there is no reason for being moral. Now 
God is such a postulate. Moral values are in close 
connection with the doctrine of the love of God. 
“For God to be loved He must be thought of as 
worthy of love, and it is difficult to believe that He 
is worthy of love if He wills such a world as ours 
except as a means to some better one, for those at 
least of his creatures who are worthy of it... . 
In the love of God the two strongest emotional 
forces which make for Morality in this world find 
their fullest and most harmonious satisfaction — 
reverence for the moral ideal and love of hu- 
manity.” ” 


25 “ Religious Values,” 1925, p. 16. 
“8 adved.j 4024. 
27 Ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 212, 243) 267, 299. 


MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE 71 


But when one asks what is the nature of God 
Who is so necessary for the conservation of values, 
we are surprised to learn that it is a God Who is 
not omnipotent.** God is not the Absolute, but 
“the absolute must include God and all other con- 
sciousness, not as isolated and unrelated beings, 
but as intimately related (in whatever way) to 
Him and to one another and as forming with Him 
a system or Unity.”*® ‘Thus the God Who con- 
serves values is not the God of traditional thought, 
but the God Who with us goes to make up the 
Absolute. 

Professor Pringle Pattison joins the rank of 
those who believe in the necessity of God for the 
conservation of values. He wars against finite per- 
sonalities constituting the final purpose or the cen- 
tral fact of the universe. “All claims made on 
man’s behalf, must be based on the objectivity of 
values revealed in his experience and brokenly 
realized there. Man does not make values any 
more than he makes reality.” *° But what is the 
nature of this God who sustains values? It is cer- 
tainly not the traditional notion, for that must be 
“profoundly transformed,” it being “‘a fusion of 
the primitive monarchical ideal with Aristotle’s 
conception of the Eternal Thinker.” ** His own 
idea of God is not that of “two independent acts, 
but the experienced fact which is the existence of 


78 I bid., P» 237: 

Itid., Pp. 239 

20 « The Idea of God,” 2d ed., 1920, pp. 43, 239. 
$1 [bid., p. 407. 


72 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


the one in the other and through the other.” * God 
is transcendent, if you will, but this transcendence 
refers “to a distinction of value or of quality, not 
to the ontological separateness of one being from 
another.” * Professor Hocking says “ ‘The use of 
the God idea . . . will be the chief determinant of 
the value level in any consciousness. ... What- 
ever value religion has for man will be founded, we 
now judge, in the religious ideas . . . the idea of 
God.” And yet, God is not so important after all, 
for later on he writes: “‘’The world would be consis- 
tent without God; it would also be consistent with 
God; whichever hypothesis a man adopts will fit 
experience equally well; neither one, so far as ac- 
counting for visible facts is concerned works better 
than the other.” * 

Hugo Miinsterberg believes that Religion de- 
mands “ a progression over the limits of the experi- 
enceable.” ** Values are found in the region of the 
human will and value implies an over-personal, 
metaphysically absolute will. But this absolute 
will is not to be interpreted as a Perfect God for he 
adds: “Whether God stands above the things or 
lives in the things themselves, whether there is one 
God or many, remains a consideration of secondary 
importance.” * 

There is also a group of philosophers inspired by 
the Kantian “ Critique of Practical Reason,” who 


82 «The Idea of God,” 2d ed., 1920, p. 254. SS Ibid. te ees 

34 «The Meaning of God in Human Experience,” 1921, pp. 136, 
139, 143. 

85 “ Eternal Values,” 1909, p. 355. °° [bad.. p. 962. 


MODERN RELIGION —POSITIVE 73 


believe that God is a postulate for moral values. 
Such is the idea of Professor Joseph A. Leighton, 
whose position may be summed up as follows: “The 
true meaning of postulating a God, ‘the animating 
principle of faith in God and the higher order of 
which He is the guardian and sustainer, is this af- 
firmative response to the very cry of mankind for the 
assurance or promise of the permanence of the life 
of most worth,’’”’*’ ‘This is similar to the views of 
Lord Balfour: ‘‘ Divine Guidance must be pos- 
tulated if we are to maintain the three great values 
— knowledge, love and beauty.” * 


2. Second Group of Value-Philosophers 


There is yet another group of philosophers for 
whom an existent God is not necessary for the con- 
servation of values, and this for varying reasons, 
either psychological or metaphysical. An example 
of the psychological point of view is furnished by 
Professor Ralph Barton Perry in his “General 
Theory of Value.” *® Instead of starting with a 
category and then seeking for instances of it, he pre- 
fers to proceed in the reverse direction, by collect- 
ing instances and then distilling out their common 
characteristics. 

The discussion of value opens with the search 
for a term which will be broad enough to embrace 
the varieties of the motor-affective life, and this 


37 «The Field of Philosophy,” 1923, p. 475. 
38 “’Theism and Thought,” 1923, p. 248. 
795926; 


74 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


term is interest. Professor Perry here separates 
himself from Santayana for whom value is abso- 
lutely indefinable, and from Brogan and Dewey 
for whom it is relatively definable. His own theory 
is that the value of an object lies in its relation to 
interest, but not in terms of a peculiarly qualified 
will or interest. But how are we to conceive this 
relation between value and interest? Does interest 
direct itself towards the object, as the marksman 
directs his arrow to the target, or does the object 
draw the interest towards itself like a magnet? In 
the first case value springs from interest and would 
be conferred on the subject; in the second case 
value would reside in the object according to its 
capacity to command interest. Professor Perry 
inclines to the first view: “ That which is an object 
of interest is co 7pso invested with value. Any ob- 
ject whatever it be, acquires value when any inter- 
est, whatever it be, is taken in it; just as anything 
whatever becomes a target when anyone aims at 
it.” *° He believes that Aristotle was “ fundamen- 
tally mistaken when he said that the apparent good 
of a thing makes it an object of appetite, as its real 
good makes it the object of rational desire, and 
that Spinoza was right in asserting that a thing is 
good because we desire it and not vice versa. 

Since interest is constitutive of value in the basic 
sense, the theory of value will take interest as its 
point of departure and centre of reference. Interest 
is then analyzed biologically, psychologically, and 

40 “ Theism and Thought,” 1923, p. 116. | 


MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE = 75 


cognitionally. The foundation of interest is biol- 
ogy. This science has definitely established the 
fact that the living organism provides the context 
of interest for there is found in it a capacity of 
prospiciently determined action. The dog who an- 
ticipates a beating behaves in such a way not only 
to avert the beating, but also in a way appropriate 
to a possible future beating which the whip repre- 
sents to him. (Animals not only possess adapta- 
tion to environment; they also acquire it.) ‘This 
anticipatory response, along with adaptation to en- 
vironment and the like are kinds of interest. What 
is lacking is prescience and this leads one into the 
psychological consideration of interest. 

Psychology defines an interested or purposive 
action as an “ action adopted because the anticipa- 
tory response which it arouses coincides with the 
unfulfilled or implicit phase of a governing pro- 
pensity.” ** A chess player for example has a series 
of moves all ready in advance; there is in him 
a coincidence of the expected sequel and the govern- 
ing tendency. 

Interest may be studied not only in its basic 
relations, biology and psychology, but also in rela- 
tion to cognition. Interest is related to cognition 
inasmuch as the satisfaction varies with the truth 
of a judgment. This is very different from saying 
that the act of interest is the same as the act of 
judgment. “The nerve of the judgment is the con- 
nection between the index and the predicate, 


iS] btd.. p.0 209. 


“6 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


whereas the nerve of interest is the connection be- 
tween the predicate and the governing propensity. ” 

The conclusion which Professor Perry draws 
from this long study of interest is that “ All values 
are subjective in the sense of being functions of in- 
terest and objective in the sense of being independ- 
ent of judgments about them.” * 

Passing on to the Critique of Value, the author 
then asks the question: What is that condition of 
an object in virtue of which it may be said to be 
better or worse than another object, or the best or 
worst among several objects? In other words, what 
is the standard of comparative value? In answer 
he gives three irreducible standards — intensity, 
preference and inclusiveness. “ An object, wine, is 
better than an object, water: first, if the interest in 
the wine is more intense than the interest in the 
water; and secondly, if the wine is preferred to the 
water; and thirdly, if the interest in the wine is 
more inclusive than the interest in the water.” “ 
The intensive principle is emphasized by the hedon- 
istic school; the preferential principle by the hu- 
manistic school, or in the cult of rationality and 
taste; and the principle of inclusiveness by the 
school of moral rigorism. 

So much for the comparative values; but what 
will be the greatest good? “The greatest good will 
be the object of an all-inclusive and harmonious 
system of interests.” *° In the individual, for ex- 


42 “ Theism and Thoughts,” 1923, p. 357 44 Tbid., p. 616. 
Oe bid. po 60S: 45 Ibid., p. 659. 


MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE = 77 


ample, harmonious interests constitute a better 
person than antagonistic interests. In the “har- 
monious person ” there is subordination of a lesser 
to a greater interest and there is also mutuality of 
which love is a special case. But there is also such 
a thing as a “harmonious society,” the harmoni- 
zation of which is effected through universal love. 
* An all-benevolent will, or a benevolence of which 
all persons are the object, and which is each per- 
son’s controlling purpose, is a unique mode of life 
—an integration sui generis... . It is the char- 
acteristic product of a personal life in which all in- 
terests are subordinated to the love of the aggre- 
gate of persons, a will resulting from the catalytic 
action of universal benevolence within the chemism 
of that complexus of appetites and desires that is 
rooted in one organism.” *° This integration does 
not make a person; it is rather a benevolent will, 
“‘ everybody’s good toward everybody.” “It is the 
will in which it is reasonable for all to concur, not 
because of some occult property or authoritative 
sanction, but because such general concurrence is 
reasonable.” ** And this all-benevolent will, ac- 
cording to Professor Perry, is God. And this God 
isnot aperson. “The demand that God shall be a 
person is only the last of the anthropomorphisms by 
which man has compromised God by the desire to 
worship him. When persons live in accord the total 
situation is something greater than a person, as truly 
as an organism is something greater than a cell.” * 


46 [bid., p. 685. 47 Tbid., p. 685. 48 [bid., p. 686. 


78 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Professor Perry believes that such a concept 
leaves no room for such troublesome questions as: 
does the supreme good consist in utility and pleas- 
ure, Or in some deeper well-being, such as virtue, 
self-perfection, or saintliness? “In the conception 
of a happiness of all which is the condition of the 
happiness of each one, there is standing room alike 


for Stoics and Epicureans, for Kantians and Utili- 


tarians, for Christians and pagans.” * 


Naturally a further question arises. Does such 
a harmonious, all-benevolent and enlightened una- 
nimity exist? Does God exist, if you will? Pro- 
fessor Perry does not fly from the difficulty. Ina 
note to page 686 of this same work he states that 
he believes in Alexander’s emergent deity, which, 
of course, does not exist but is the nisus towards 
existence. We can therefore expect a like solution, 
and our expectations are not unfulfilled. Una- 
nimity should exist, is Professor Perry’s contention. 
“The best so defined is a hypothetical and not a 
historical fact. ... If I say that another world 
war would be a supreme catastrophe, or that a man 
having a stature of ten feet would be taller than any 
man now alive, I affirm what is true despite the 
non-occurrence of war or the non-existence of 
giants. ... Soif one asks generally what would 
be best, and is answered in terms of that which 
neither did, nor does, nor even will exist, such an 
answer is not on that account inapt or untrue.” ” 

In that sense God (the all-benevolent will of 


49 “ Theism and Thoughts, 1923 p. 687. 50 Jbid., p. 688. 


ae 


ve ie ey 
a 


= —— 


MODERN RELIGION— POSITIVE 79 


mankind) is helpful for values. ‘God defined as 
a will which would make all demands harmonious 
and commensurable if it existed, is so defined by 
combining the facts of discord and incommen- 
surability with the principles of comparative 
value. . . . God is that being whose nature may be 
judged to be highest, in the sense proper to goal 
as yet unattained but rationally binding on the 
will. God is a being far exceeding and surpassing 
man, and yet dependent on man’s moral effort. 
The world becomes divine through being willed 
to be divine, and hence its being divine is condi- 
tioned by the dynamic faith through which high 
resolves are carried into effect. God’s existence 
may in this sense result from belief im God, 
though not from a belief that God already exists.” ™ 
“The persistent danger of religion is that through 
excess of faith in his existence God should 
cease in any moral or intelligible sense to be 
_ divine.” °? 

Professor J. D. Mackenzie, in his “ Ultimate 
Values,” after rejecting the notion of Dr. G. E. 
Moore that values are objective, as well as the view 
of Sedgwick that they are purely subjective, in- 
clines to a compromise position that they are both 
objective and subjective. The difficulty with the 
first view — and here he resembles Professor Perry 
—is “that in every case of intrinsic value it seems 
to be true that a change in the subjective attitude 
produces a change in the object.” °° The objection 


51 Tbid., p. 689. 52 Ibid., p. 690 and cf. p. 691. 
53 “ Ultimate Values,” p. 123. 


80 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


he raises against the subjective view is that “to be 
pleased we must be pleased with something.” 

Among other theories of value, which ignore God 
as their foundation, though not necessarily exclud- 
ing Him, are those of Meinong, Ehrenfels, and 
Urban. 


For Meinong value is the content of feeling when ~ 


this is mediated by a judgment. The measure of 
the value of an object is the pleasure and pain felt 
on the assumption of its existence or non-existence. 
The particular kind of objective, or what one feels 
should exist, he calls a “dignitative,” just as he 
terms what one desires to exist a “ desiderative.” 
Values have in other words that non-existent ob- 
jectivity which is so basic in Meinong’s system.” 


Ehrenfels adopts the psychological method like ~ 


Meinong. His theory is something like Perry’s. 
“Value is a relation between an object and a sub- 
ject, which expresses the fact that the subject either 


actually desired the object or would desire it, in 


case he were convinced of its existence.” ” 


For Urban value in the sense of ought to be is an 
ultimate category, under which in the last analysis, 
must be subordinated even the categories of exist- 
ence and truth.” 


Value does not attach itself uniquely to will. It | 


is not relative to any actual will either divine or 
human, for then value would become a question of 
existence and nature. He argues that the whole, 


54 “ Weber Annahmen,” 1910, pp. 182, 183. 
55 « System der Werttheorie,” 1897, Vol. I, p. 65. 
56 “ Value and Existence,” Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 13, 1906, 


P. 449. 


‘ 
4 


MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE — 81 


perfect happiness ought-to-be, which following 
Meinong, he calls an “ objective.” Urban says that 
when we know a value we need know nothing of 
being or possibility. Thus I may say that “ perfect 
happiness ” ought to be whether or not there is such 
a thing, or even though it would be impossible. 
Ideals ought to be, and they possess regulative 
value, even when like “‘ complete self-realization,” 
they are essentially unattainable; just as impos- 
sible fictions such as the “infinitely little” or the 
“ether conceived as a perfect fluid ” may have value 
in science.” 

To be added to this group, whose ultimate is the 
ought-to-be, there are others for whom value is 
purely human. Bertrand Russell, for example, as- 
serts, “It is we who create value and our desires 
which confer value. In this realm we are kings, 
and we debase our kingship if we bow down to 
Nature.” * Professor Sellars writes, “ Values con- 
cern man’s response to, and estimation of things. 

Though they are conditioned objectively by 
the nature of their objects, they are yet primarily 
personal and social, that is human.”” Finally, 
there is Dr. Walter G. Everett, who is so much 
wedded to an earthly ground for values. “ For the 
realization of all values,” he writes, “we are di- 
rectly dependent upon the cosmic Power.” * The 
world has outgrown the Palestinian and Medieval 


67 “ Value and Existence,” Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 13, 1906, 
p. 463. “Valuation,” 1909, p. 16 ff. 

5S “ What I Believe,” 1925, p. 25. 

59 “ Evolutionary Naturalism,” p. 342. 

60 «“ Moral Values,” p. 422. 


82 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


idea of a double world — heaven and earth. “The 
two worlds of value are here and now—they are 
with us in each hour, nay in each moment of choice, 
as we consciously will to dwell in the world of 
knowledge or ignorance, of love or hate, of beauty 
or ugliness, of generous aims or ignoble passions. 
The feeling that what is won in this process 
is unspeakably precious is the true basis of religious 
reverence and confidence in the extension and 
growth of these values as the true ground of re- 
ligious faith and hope. . . . He who does not find 
God here is in danger of finding Him nowhere.” ® 
In light of the foregoing presentation two conclu- 
sions emerge: (1) There is a growing tendency in 
contemporary philosophy to present a religion with- 
out God. This is done either by denying God alto- 
gether, which is rare, or else by emptying the God- 
idea of all traditional content and identifying it 
with anything as vague as a “nisus” and as va- 
porous as “ society divinized.” (2) As a substitute 
for religion in terms of God and man, the majority 
of philosophers of religion offer a religion in terms 
of value or friendliness of the universe. These 
views are new; they are forcing themselves upon 
intellects and are meeting with favorable reception. 
It is not enough to dismiss them as “modern,” or 
“foolish ” for they are offered in all sincerity. It 
is the purpose of this book to pass a reasoned judg- 
ment on them in the light of history and the phi- 
losophy of the “‘ most learned of the saintly and the 
most saintly of the learned,” St. Thomas. 
61 “ Moral Values,” pp. 427, 428, 431. 


ioe. PART Il 
1€ Historical Origins of the 


ontemporary Idea of Religion 


PART II 


The Historical Origins of the 
Contemporary Idea of Religion 


CHAPTER III 


THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES BEHIND THE EVOLUTION 
OF THE CONTEMPORARY IDEA OF RELIGION 


HE problem before us is to account histori- 
cally for the contemporary idea of religion, 
which has been reviewed in the preceding 

chapters. The mass of historical data of the last 
four centuries, representing the raw material of 
this study, is capable of manifold and diverse in- 
terpretations. A survey of the democratizing 
movement in religion, for example, would not em- 
brace the same historical data as would the study of 
the development of dogmas. In like manner, a 
study of the origins of the contemporary concep- 
tion of religion will not include those elements 
which are foreign to the subject even though con- 
temporaneous with it. Our interest lies only in 
those particular and definite threads of the past 
which have been woven into the fabric of what is 
now called “modern religion.” 

Since there are no hard and fast lines in the evo- 
lution or progress of religious thinking, it is only 

85 


86 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


natural that, here and there, we should find cer- 
tain cross-currents of thought, cutting diagonally 
through what appears to be a natural line of devel- 
opment. When Newton gave his physics to the 
world, and Galileo his astronomy, there were waves 
of opposition, which probably confused their con- 
temporaries. But for us, these events are sufii- 
ciently in retrospect to permit us to separate the 
wheat from the chaff, and to outline the story of 
the development of the new physics and the new as- 
tronomy. So too, there are cross currents in phil- 
osophical thinking; there are tangents of idealism 
cutting through materialism, as there are reactions 
to Lutheran Protestantism among reformers them- 
selves. But from all these reactions, and cross cur- 


rents, there still remains a very definite line of _ 


thought which has brought its heritage to the doors 
of the twentieth century and enriched, if not cre- 
ated, our new ideas concerning man’s relation 
to God. 

Our task is not to trace the development of relig- 
ious thinking in a strictly chronological way, nor 
is it to localize the thought according to the coun- 
tries in which it took its rise. Rather, we shall seek 
out those spiritual principles buried in the past 
which have been germinal in the development of 
modern religion. We are solidaire with the past 
intellectually as well as physically. We are not 
only children of our age but we are children of every 
age. The principles born in acie mentis of our in- 
tellectual forebears is the germ of the “ spirit of 
modern progress.” 


THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES 87 


Spiritual principles — it is these we seek, for re- 
ligion, whatever else it may be, involves spiritual 
elements, which transcend the gross materialities of 
life. Spiritual principles are sought for still an- 
other reason, and that is because they are funda- 
mental. It is the thought which inspires action; 
“the thinker lives forever; the toiler dies in a day.” 
The Marathon racers of Greece are dead and for- 
gotten, but Plato and Aristotle live and are vener- 
ated. The mere search after the origin of the sup- 
posed conflict between science and religion, monism 
and pluralism, vitalism and mechanism, would al- 
ways leave something to be desired. Such history 
might explain the growth of the fact, but it would 
not explain the fundamental principles behind it. 

Now there are three fundamental spiritual con- 
cepts with which religion and philosophy are con- 
cerned. One of these belongs to the supernatural 
order, the other two to the natural. They are: 
grace, intellect and will. Grace is a participation 
in the intimate life of God; intellect and will are 
likenesses of the Divine Life. We are like God 
inasmuch as we have an intellect and a will; we are 
like to the animals inasmuch as we have a body. 
It is around these three concepts that the whole 
religious and philosophical life of man revolves. 
Other problems are subsidiary; materialism, for 
example, is only secondarily a glorification of mat- 
ter; primarily, it is the denial of the spiritual. 

The treatment these spiritual realities have re- 
ceived from the hands of thinkers since the begin- 
ning of the Christian era has been as varied as it 


88 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


has been bewildering. The Pelagians and Augus- 


tine in the past, Fundamentalists and Modernists 
in our own day, are not agreed on the nature of 
grace. Bergsonians and Thomists have different 
notions of the intellect while Fouillé and Nietzsche 
have given us quite diverse conceptions of the will. 
It is necessary then (under penalty of never tracing 
out a coherent history of modern religious ideas) to 
have some fixed meaning for these great spiritual 
realities. A standard is necessary. If the car- 
penter’s rule changed with each beam even the 
pragmatist would not want to live in a modern 
house. If everything changes we should never 
know there was a change. 

Without prejudicing the case, but merely to have 
a certain norm by which to judge these spiritual 
realities, we take the definitions given them by the 
philosophia perennis. Whether or not a contem- 
porary philosopher agrees or differs with this stan- 
dard does not matter. He may disagree, but he 
knows very definitely with what he disagrees. The 
Scholastic meaning of these terms is taken as a 
norm, and if there were any other norm equally 
inelastic and permanent, it would serve our pres- 
ent purpose just as well, but there is none. The 
justification of this norm on the grounds of its 
logical consistency is quite another problem than 
that of its fixity, though fixity does make us sus- 
pect its consistency. The problem of its justifica- 
tion we shall touch on in the following section. 

A brief explanation of what the philosophia per- 


Ee 


THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES 89 


ennis and the theologia perennis mean by grace, 
intellect and will, will not only clear the mist of 
misunderstanding which hangs about these terms 
in the minds of many contemporaries, but will also 
serve to make clear the modern ideas themselves, 
inasmuch as they are reactions from the traditional 
notions; and we can never know what a man has 
fallen to until we know what he has fallen from. 


Grace 


Grace. Creation had for its purpose the com- 
munication of the infinite riches of Divine per- 
fection. And since the perfections of God have 
no limits it was impossible that they be fully 
represented by one creature. ‘That is why, St. 
Thomas tells us, God has multiplied and diversified 
creatures, in order that what one lacked in the 
manifestation of Divine Goodness the other might 
supply. The Goodness which is in God is simple, 
but it broke up, so to speak, much like the rays of 
the sun break up into the seven colors of the spec- 
trum when shining through a prism. ‘That is the 
reason why the infinite perfections of God are better 
represented by the totality of the cosmos, than by 
any one nature, however perfect it might be.* Just 
as the infirmity of our human language obliges us 
to multiply words in order to express something of 
the nature of God, which He Himself speaks in a 
single and unique Word; just as a teacher breaks 


1 1. q. 47 art. 1. References to St. Thomas will be given through- 
out this work in this manner, i.e., without nominal reference. 


ele) RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


up abstract principles into the crumbs of concrete 


examples for his pupils, so too does God break into 
fragments His infinite yet simple perfection, in 
order that our finite minds might grasp and under- 
stand it. 

Thus it is that the whole world is an ensemble of 
the participations of this Divine Beauty. If all 
things in this universe exist, it is because they par- 
ticipate in the Being of God; if there are some 
things with life, it is because they are reflections of 
the life of God; if there are beings endowed with 
an intellect and a will —like men and angels —it 
is because they are a participation of the Sovereign 
Intellect which is God. 

And yet none of these participations, however ex- 
cellent they may be, suffices to constitute creatures 
children of God; none of them permits man to 
become partaker of the Divine Nature itself. The 
stone, for example, is like man, inasmuch as it 
has existence; the plant is like man, inasmuch as 
it lives; the animal is like man, inasmuch as it is 
conscious, but there is nothing in the universe 
which is like man inasmuch as he is possessed of 
an intellect and a will. So too, there is nothing in 
the world like to God in His most intimate nature, 
in that by which He is God. By nature we are 
creatures, not children. 

If God, out of the fullness of His love for men, 
wills to communicate to us a participation of His 
nature which will make us not merely creatures but 
children, such a gift will be above the due nature of 


THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES QI 


man without being contrary to it.’ It will be super- 
natural in the strict sense of the word. It would be 
a “supernatural” act for marble, if it bore fruit; 
it would be a “supernatural” act for a flower if it 
Were conscious with the consciousness of the five 
senses; it would be a “supernatural” act for an 
animal if it were endowed with the power of reason- 
ing like an Aristotle or an Aquinas ... “ super- 
natural,” because these gifts transcend, in a vague 
way, the exigencies and powers and nature of these 
creatures. But, in a far more rigorous way would 
it be a supernatural gift for man, if God communi- 
cated to him the power of becoming a member of 
the family of the Trinity, an adopted son of God, 
consortes divine nature. ‘This participation in 
the very intimate life of God, is called grace and has 
been defined as “a supernatural gift of God be- 
stowed on us through the merits of Jesus Christ 
for our salvation.” And the least gift of this Life, 
according to St. Thomas, is worth more than all 
created things. It is grace which makes the dif- 
ference between creature of God and son of God. 
The same learned Doctor tells us that there is more 


2 Sic enim fides presupponit cognitionem naturalem, sicut gratia 
naturam, et ut perfectio perfectibile. 1.q. 2 art. 2 ad. 1. 

3 Those who wish something more than a mere analogical ex- 
pression of the natural and the supernatural will find an excellent ex- 
position in the work of P. Garrigou Lagrange, “ De Revelatione,” 
Vol. 2, p. 198. 

1. Natura in qualibet re est eius essentia, ut principium radicale 
operationum et passionum quz ei per se conveniunt. 

2. Supernaturale dicitur pro qualibet ente finito zd quod excidit 
proportionem eius nature, et id quod superat eius essentialia, eius natu- 
rales passivitates, vires, exigentias, immo eius meritum naturale, eam- 
que gratuito perficere potest. 


92 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


difference between a soul in the state of grace and a 
soul not in the state of grace on this earth, than 
there is between a soul in the state of grace on 
earth and a soul in heaven. Grace is the germ of 
glory; it has the potencies of the beatific vision 
within it, in a far more remarkable way than the 
acorn has the potencies of the oak within itself. 


Intellect * 


The intellect has two important characteristics: 
its realism, and its transcendentalism.’ Realism, 
because it knows things before knowing the ideas 
of things, it being only by a reflex act that it grasps 
the ideas. That with which it is in direct contact 
is the real. Transcendentalism, because of its 
power to know things above the sensible order. The 
intellect is spiritual; being spiritual it can be actu- 
ated spiritually, and the more spiritual the object 


* It is worth noting at the outset that intellect and reason are not 
syonymous terms—a confusion into which Professor Bergson hope- 
lessly fell. The intellect simply apprehends truth; reason moves 
from a known truth to a truth hitherto unknown. Intelligere enim 
est simpliciter veritatem intelligibilem apprehendere; ratiocinari autem 
est procedere de uno intellecto ad aliud ad veritatem cognoscendam. 
I. q. 79 art. 8; 1-2. g. 93 art. 4; 3d4 q. art. 1 ad 5; C.G. lib. 4 ¢. 11; 
De Veritate, q. 15 art. 1; Post Analy. lib. 1 art. 1. Intellect and 
reason are related as being and becoming, or as the centre of a circle 
to its circumference. Et sic motus comparatur ad quietem, et ut 
ad principium et ut ad terminum; ita et ratio comparatur ad intellec- 
tum ut motus ad quietem et ut generatio ad esse. De Veritate, q. 15 art. 
1. The intellect does not explain, does not argue, it grasps. It knows 
an intelligible object as the eye knows a sensible object. Reason is 
related to the intellect as movement is related to rest; or as acquiring 
a thing is related to having a thing; as going is related to arriving. 
Furthermore, just as going and arriving do not mean two journeys, 
so reason and intellect are not two distinct faculties. 

5 See Part III, Chap. I for a fuller explanation of these points. 


THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES 93 


the more adequate it is for the intellect. The fac- 
tors disclosed by experience do not limit its power 
of knowledge any more than all the colors of the 
rainbow exhaust the possibilities of vision. ‘The 
intellect never finds an object adequate to itself 
until it rests in God. 


Will 

The will is the faculty of the good as the intellect 
is the faculty of being. Everything in this universe 
has a curve which it must trace. The target for 
every one of nature’s projectiles varies with its na- 
ture; in like manner the propulsion which traces its 
curve and directs it to its targets, varies from 
thing to thing. Material things, for example, are 
directed to their end by laws of nature; animals are 
directed to their end by instincts, and man is di- 
rected to his end by reason. Pleasure is the attain- 
ment of the end for which a thing is created; pain 
is caused by being out of joint with that end. The 
will is that tendency towards a thing suitable to its 
nature. Desire is the mainspring or the impul- 
sion of the projectile and is founded on — first, an 
actual indigence, and secondly, a potential richness. 


Relation of the Intellect and the Will 


Whence does the will receive its end or its ob- 
ject, or what constitutes its target? It is quite 
easy to see that material things receive their end 


® Quasi tendere in aliquid ad ipsum ordinatum. De Veritate, q. 22 
art. 1. 


94 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


from nature, and animals their end from instincts. 
But whence does man receive his? In addition to 
his own nature with its native inclinations common 
to the whole human family, man, in virtue of his 
spiritual soul, is capable of receiving the natures of 
other things within himself by an act of knowledge, 
knowledge being an assimilation and a possession 
of the outside world. Of course he does not possess 
the natures of these things in a material way, but 
in a spiritual or “intentional ” way, for everything 
assimilates according to its own nature. 

Now, since these natures or “forms” as they are 
more technically called, exist in man in a nobler 
way than in things, it follows that the inclination 
derived from these natures or “forms” will be 
more elevated than in the material world. In 
lower creatures where these “forms ” are natural, 
the inclination is called appetite; in man, where 
the forms are acquired, the inclination is called the 
will. Itis clear then that unless there was knowl- 
edge there would never be a desire —ignott nulla 
cupido. 

Knowledge is the condition of desire,” and the 
more lofty and noble the knowledge the more 
elevated the desire. If our thoughts are low and 
base we tend to that which is low and base; if they 
are sublime and virtuous we tend to that which is 
sublime and virtuous. Hence the necessity in the 
Scholastic synthesis for clear and clean thinking. 
Sound pedagogy cannot overlook this point. It 


* Bonum autem appetibile cujus ratio est in intellectu est objectum 
voluntatis. 1. q. 82 art. 3. ¢. 


THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES 95 


is not enough to legislate on a desire when it has 
passed into act; it is far better to crush the thought 
before it is desired. The proper therapeutic for bad 
living is clear thinking. We must supply the will 
with the right kind of projectiles, and trace for it 
the proper trajectory, for the will, by its nature, is 
inspired by the intellect. 

This brings us to the question: which is the 
higher, the intellect or the will? It is in answer to 
this question that we find the source of many of 
our erroneous ideas on religion.® 

A very manifest distinction must be made at the 
beginning: the intellect and will may be considered 
in relation to things above the soul in nobility, or 
below it. 

1. In relation to things below the soul, in nature 
and nobility, the intellect is nobler than the 
will.? The reason is that the intellect and the will 
act differently toward material things. The intel- 
lect elevates things by knowing them, for it confers 
on them a new existence, but the will steps down 
to meet the requirements of the thing. The intellect 
in knowing assimilates, and since it is spiritual, 


8 Absolutely speaking, the intellect is higher than the will, for 
the reason that its object is more simple. ‘Though the intellect must 
use the senses, yet in its movement toward the intelligible it leaves 
behind it as many images as possible, whereas the will carries them 
with it in its movement toward the object which it loves, that is, carries 
with it the affections of the sensible appetite. Even in a practical way, 
knowledge is imperfect as long as it carries subjective dispositions and 
prejudices with it. Furthermore, the object of the intellect is within 
itself, whereas the object of the will is that which is presented by the 
intellect. 1. q. 83 art. 2 c.; De Veritate, q. 22 art. 11. 

® Quando vero res, in qua est bonum, est infra animam, tunc etiam 
in comparatione ad talem rem intellectus est altior voluntate. 1. q. 
S2vatt, 3. C. 


96 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


it assimilates spiritually. Thus the tree endowed 
with a mere material existence is ennobled and per- 
fected when it enters into a knowing mind for there 
it becomes endowed with intellectual being. The 
will, on the contrary, instead of drawing the thing 
in to itself, goes out to meet the object of its love. 
Lovers always accommodate themselves to and 
meet the demands of the one loved, and for this 
reason love is often synonymous with sacrifice. 
And since here the object loved is beneath the soul 
in dignity, the will by taking leave of its spiritual 
demands and descending to mere material satisfac- 
tions would be degrading itself. 

For this reason, the intellect as far as material 
things are concerned, is nobler than the will and a 
practical conclusion to be’ deduced is that, in ac- 
cordance with the Thomistic position, it is much 
better to be a scientist than a worldling; for the sci- 
entist ennobles the universe by knowing it, while 
the worldling degrades himself by loving it. 

2. In relation to things above the soul in dignity, 
however, the will is superior to the intellect.” 
Again, the reason is that the intellect and will act 
differently towards things above the soul, as they 
do towards things beneath it. The intellect in at- 
tempting to grasp truths which are difficult and 
above its capacities, splits them up, makes use of 
examples, concretizes them and brings them down 
to its own level. This every teacher must do who 


10 Quando igitur res, in qua est bonum, est nobilior ipsa anima, 
in qua est ratio intellecta, per comparationem ad talem rem voluntas 
est altior intellectu. 1. q. 83 ad 2c. 


ae 
wee 
Tae a 


THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES 97 


has the task of presenting abstruse truths to others. 
The intellect thus runs true to its form, assimilating 
knowledge according to its nature, splitting up the 
simple and the abstract. 

But the will, on the contrary, since it always goes 
out to the object loved and tends to become one 
with it, is ennobled inasmuch as the object loved 
is nobler than itself. It becomes heavenly in lov- 
ing heavenly things as it becomes earthly in loving 
earthly things, forever manifesting the law that love 
tends to become like or one with the object loved. 
Thus philosophy disposes the mind for the accept- 
ance of the Incarnation, wherein God became man 
and like to man because He loved man. 

A practical conclusion from this doctrine of St. 
Thomas is one which he himself draws; namely, it 
is better to love God than to know Him, just as it 
is better to know the material things than to love 
them. Melior est amor Dei quam cognitio; e con- 
trario melior est cognitio rerum corporalium, 
guam amor. We ennoble things in knowing them; 
we ennoble ourselves in loving God. Hence the 
necessity for loving something nobler than our- 
selves in order that we might be perfected by that 
love. Not only that; our knowledge and our love 
should be harmonious. We should love what we 
know only according to the degree of nobility which 
that thing possesses. Thus we reflect the Trinity 
in which Knowledge and Love are in harmonious 
eternal balance—the Son and the Spirit being 
equal. 


98 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


The origin of the contemporary idea of religion 
is to be found in the historical reactions to these 
three fundamental ideas of the spiritual life — 
grace, intellect and will. It is admitted on all 
sides that during the last four centuries there 
has been a gradual misunderstanding, dissatisfac- 
tion with, and finally the elimination of each of 
these realities, the denial being accompanied in 
each case by the assertion of some substitute to 
fill the void. 

The general principle which has been implicit in 
religious thinking for the past four centuries has — 
been the denial of the transcendent and the asser- 
tion of the immanent. In the normal order of 
things there is a balance between the transcendent 


and the immanent, for all life is an equilibrium be- 


tween the forces of within and the forces of with- 
out. The negation of the transcendent under the 
plea that it is an oppression and a violence to our 
nature, always has for its counterpart an insist- 
ence on immanence, on the plea that it makes for 
independence. 

The Denial of the Transcendent: By this is 
meant the tendency to ignore or disregard those 
spiritual realities which lie beyond the phenomenal 
world about us. What traditional thought has 
called transcendent (not in the Kantian sense) our 
contemporaries regard as extrinsic; and what is 
extrinsic is considered as an attack against liberty 
of mind and freedom of thought, as something 
which stands between us and our power to work out 


THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES 99 


our own salvation, as something which is unnatural 
for the very reason that it is transcendent, and as a 
force whose sole end and purpose is opposition to 
the ego. Every mean which common sense regards 
as uniting the “ within ” to the “ without ” is looked 
upon as an “intermediary” which separates us 
from the real—such are ideas in the realm of 
knowledge and the Church in the kingdom of 
grace.” 

The Assertion of the Immanent: The denial of the 
perfectible as something extrinsic has as its coun- 
terpart the glorification of the “within” as con- 
trasted with the “ without.” The Immanent prin- 
ciple asserts that there is nothing which dominates 
man, nothing which measures man, no Supreme 
End toward which he tends. Man is independent 
as regards powers above him; he possesses license 
as regards laws which reason may press upon him; 
he is supreme and free as regards the choice of 
values. Nothing above man, nothing above mind, 
nothing above matter —these are the dictates and 
maxims of the immanent principle carried to its 
logical conclusion. 

This principle of the denial of the transcendent 
and the assertion of the immanent has been pro- 
gressively applied to the three great spiritual real- 
ities of all religion: Grace, Intellect, and Will. 
Each in its turn has been denied as “ extrinsic,” 
and a something foreign and exotic has been erected 
in its place. 


11 Jacques Maritain, ‘“ Anti-Moderne,” Introduction. 


100 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


DENIAL OF THE TRANSCENDENT ASSERTION OF THE IMMANENT 


Grace The Philosophy of Individ- 
ualism 

Intellect The Philosophy of Fact 

Will The Philosophy of Value 


The three great periods roughly corresponding 
to these three stages are the Reformation, Ra- 
tionalism and Romanticism. The problem of ~ 
each of these periods was formulated in terms of 
the ego. The Protestant Reformation asked the 
question: “ How am I justified?”; Rationalism 
asked the question: “ How do I know?” and Ro- 
manticism, “What am I worth?” The problem 
of grace, the problem of the intellect, the problem 
of the will were no longer formulated in the third 
person as with the Scholastics, but in the first. In _ 
a word, the history of Theology ceased to be 
Christo-centric and became anthropo-centric; the 
history of philosophy ceased to be theo-centric 
and became ego-centric. _ 

The three great prophets of the religious reform 
who have prepared the way for twentieth century 
ideas are Luther, Descartes and Kant. 

Luther distorted grace by making it extrinsic to 
an intrinsically corrupt human nature, and through 
his doctrine of private interpretation prepared the 
way for the Philosophy of Individualism. 

Descartes distorted intellect by making it intui- 
tive and independent of the sensible, and through 
his rational principle of the clear and distinct pre- 
pared the way for the Philosophy of Fact. 


THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES tor 


Kant distorted the will by making it blind, and 
separating it from the intellect and through his 
doctrine of the moral sense ushered in the Phil- 
osophy of Value. 

The combination of these three philosophies, — 
subjectivism, rationalism and pragmatism lie at 
the roots, we believe, of our contemporary idea 
of religion. 


CHAPTER IV 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 


ONG before the sixteenth century the super- 
natural was the object of attack and mis- 
understanding. St. Augustine found it 

necessary to defend it against the Pelagians. In the 
year 1311 the Council of Vienne defended the 
supernatural against the Beguards and Beguins 
who asserted that every intellectual nature has 
naturally its beatitude within itself and therefore 
has no need of glory to lift it to the beatific vision. 
Later, under the Pontificate of John XXII, cer- 
tain propositions of John Eckhart were condemned 
because they tended to a pantheistic suppression 
of the natural in favor of the supernatural. 

But none of these errors ever succeeded in be- 
coming a tradition like those which arose at the 
time of the Reformation. The theology of Luther 
marks formally the first seed of a tradition touch- 
ing on the supernatural which ultimately bore the 
fruit of an entire elimination of the whole order of 
grace and justification. 

Luther, of course, did not draw his theology of 
the supernatural out of the void, for the very rea- 
son that no man is completely isolated from the 
time in which he lives. There were certain ante- 


102 


PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 103 


cedents both in his life and doctrine as well as in 
history which prepared the way for it. 

The two principal ideas which formed the back- 
ground of Luther’s doctrine concerning the rela- 
tion of grace to nature are: 


1. The doctrine of the essential corruption of human nature. 
2. The nominalism of the decadent Scholastics. 


1. Essential Corruption of Human Nature 


Whether it was Luther’s own experience of the 
invincibility of concupiscence, or the rational con- 
viction of the inability to perform good works which 
led him to the doctrine of essential corruption of 
human nature in no way affects the certainty that 
he held such a doctrine.* 


1-A problem of secondary importance is the psychological elements 
which gave birth to his doctrine on concupiscence. Two principal 
theories are those of Grisar and Denifle who are divided on the priority 
of the idea and the fact. Denifle believes that Luther’s inner experience 
paved the way for the doctrine. Grisar denied that it did. cf. Grisar, 
“ Luther,” English edition, Vol. 1, p. 110 ff: Denifle, “ Luther,” French 
ed., Vol. 2, p. 391 ff. There seems much in the life of Luther which 
would indicate that he arrived at this doctrine through experience. (1) 
He often equated being in the state of grace with feeling himself in 
the state of grace. (2) He relied over-much on his own forces, much 
more than on grace, in his attempt to overcome the revolts of lower 
nature, “ Presumptuossimus justitiarius,” quoted by Janssen, “ L’Alle- 
magne et la Reforme,” Vol. 2, p. 71. (See notes 4 and 5 in Maritain, 
Les 3 Reformateurs,” p. 241.) (3 Added to both of these was a dedi- 
cation to work which took him away from all prayer. Maritain of. cit. 
pp. 10, 11. See Denifle, Vol. 2, pp. 433, 4343 also pp. 391, 392 for 
comparison of his ideas with Grisar’s on the question of the priority 
of experience over doctrine, also note by French translator J. Paquier: 
For Grisar; Vol. 1, English edition, pp. 110-117: Luther’s belief in its 
irresistibility is not to be alleged as a proof of his moral perversity. In 
favor of his thesis Grisar gives two reasons: — 

1. Luther strove to overcome bad tendencies. 

2. He wished that justification be crowned by the fulfillment of the 
commandments, 


104 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


It is quite clear that in the year 1514 Luther held 
to the traditional notion of original sin, and upheld 
the freedom of man in face of his passions.’ In his 
‘“‘Commentary on the Romans” he sacrifices this 
freedom a little, but insists that prayer will over- 
come everything. His sermons at this particular 
time are full of exhortations to prayer as the great 
help in overcoming the burning fires of concupi- 
scence. In 1515 he comes out very clearly and 
asserts that evil, concupiscence and sin are “in- 
vincible.”* Experience, he asserts, teaches us 
that.* 

This invincibility of concupiscence which “ can- 
not be removed from us by any counsel or work,” is 
another way of saying that human nature is in- 
trinsically corrupt. Grace, Baptism and Penance 
in no way affect this essential corruption. ‘The 
Scholastics he upbraided because “in their arbi- 
trary fashion, they make out that on the infusion 
of grace, the whole of original sin is remitted in 
everyone.” ° 


Grisar weaves the whole story of Luther around abnormal psychol- 
ogy. That he opened a fertile field for investigation is shown by works 
written since, e.g., H. Strohl, “ L’evolution Religieuse de Luther jus- 
qu’en 1515,” 1922, in which he shows that Luther’s boyhood was clouded 
by religious fear. P. Smith also in the preface to the second edition 
of “Life and Letters of Martin Luther” admits a “ neurotic vein” 
in Luther. Finally, R. Will in “La Liberté Chrétienne, étude sur le 
principe de la pieté chez Luther,” 1922, believes that Luther is a problem 
for religious psychology. 

2 “ Werke,” Weimar ed. III, p. 215. 

3 “ Invincibilem esse concupiscentiam penitus,” Weimar, I, p. 35. 

* Sic enim passio, ire, supberbie, luxurie, cum absens est, facilis 
presumitur victu ab inexpertis; sed cum presens est, sentitur difficillima, 
immo insuperabilis, ut experientia docet. Weimar, IV, pp. 207, 7, 32. 

5 “ Schol. Rom.,” p. 108. 


PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 105 


At one time, he says, he had believed that the 
Sacrament of Penance removed everything, and 
therefore in his madness thought himself better after 
confession than those who had not confessed.° But 
now he knows that sin remains even after absolu- 
tion. “Sin therefore,” he writes, “ still remains in 
the spiritual man for his exercise in the life of grace, 
for the humbling of his pride.... We must 
carry on a war with our desires for they are culpa- 
ble; they are really sins and render us worthy of 
damnation.” ’ 

If grace, absolution, and baptism do not affect 
the soul intrinsically, neither do good works. 
‘Works, do not render us good, but our goodness, 
or rather the goodness of God, makes us good and 
makes our works good, for in themselves they 
would not be good, and they are or are not good 
in so far as God accounts them or does not account 
them good.” * | 

Concupiscence then, with Luther, is not some- 
thing which solicits the will without determining 
it, but on the contrary, is an essential evil of 
human nature which corrupts the interior man, his 
reason, will, and his appetites. In other words, 
concupiscence is original sin itself. Nothing can 
remove it or alter it intrinsically. It remains 
even after the administration of the sacraments. 
Human nature is essentially bad. ‘We are all a 
lost lump.” ® 

Sin and grace then co-exist in the same being, for 


6 Omnia ablata putabam et evacuata, etiam intrinsece, [bid., p. 109. 
7 [bid., p. 178. © bid. Pp. 224. ©. 9, Weimar, p. 343. 


106 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


the human nature is essentially sinful, and grace 
is merely a covering for that sinfulness and in no 
way affects human nature intrinsically. A con- 
clusion which follows is that virtue and vice may 
co-exist, and Luther admitted this.” 

The teaching of Luther on human nature may be 
summed up in the following propositions: 

1. Original justice in the Garden of Paradise was 
the natural state of man. What traditional thought 
called gifts were “‘ just as natural for man as to re- 
ceive light through the eyes.” 

2. Now when man lost these gifts through the 
fall, he lost that which was natural for him, and 
forever after became “ de-naturalized,” so to speak, 
in this sense that his nature became intrinsically 
and essentially vitiated and corrupted. 

3. Concupiscence which is the inclination to sin 
and which is “invincible” is identical with orig- 
inal sin. 


4. Concupiscence remains all through life, so 


does original sin. Grace, Baptism, Penance in no 
way affect our intrinsic corruption. Hence every 
act which proceeds from our nature is sinful for 
reason that our nature is sinful. ‘“ We are all a 
lost lump.” 


2. Nominalism 


The first source of Luther’s peculiar notion of 
the super-natural is to be found in his theory of 
human nature. The second source is to be found in 


10 “ Vera castitas est in luxuria.” Weimar, I, p. 486. 


PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM $107 


the Nominalism of the decadent Scholastics. Wil- 
liam of Occam is known as Venerabilis Inceptor 
Nominalium. “On theological questions concern- 
ing poverty he came in conflict with the Pope; his 
sentences were condemned by the University of 
Paris, he appealed from the Holy See to a General 
Council; was excommunicated in 1328, protested 
against the decisions of the General Chapter of the 
Order, and then took refuge with Lewis of Bavaria, 
the schismatic, whose literary defender he be- 
came.’ 

Now what were some of the doctrines of the Oc- 
camists? To their justice let it be said that they 
recognized that the natural and the supernatural 
order were distinct from each other. But the two 
principal doctrines which bear on the present con- 
sideration are the following: 

1. Grace is not absolutely necessary; it is neces- 
sary only in the present condition of things. Any 
act of charity which we perform in the ordinary 
course of our mortal life does not differ essentially 
from any act of nature. It is not therefore anything 
above our natural forces.” 

2. God accepts our supernatural acts as such, 
simply because He has willed to do so. They are 
not necessarily and in themselves meritorious. It 
is in the nature of no act to be meritorious, even 
though it be infused with charity. The merit comes 
from the free acceptance by God.” 


11 Grisar, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 131. 
12 Occam. 1, Sentences d. 17, q. 2, ad 1. 
13 [bid., Sentences d. 17, q. I. 


1 er eee oe 
SrA Pars 1 

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108 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Luther was influenced by theology of Occam. He 
states that he belonged to the School of Occam, * 
and considered Occam as the most gifted of all 
Schoolmen.** He was very familiar with the Com- 
mentary of d’Ailli on the Sentences, and in his mar- 
ginal notes on the Sentences of Peter Lombard often 
cites d’Ailli under the name Cameracensis, Bishop 
of Cambrai. It is a little early yet to say definitely 
whether the whole of the Nominalist doctrine of 
Luther was derived from the Occamists. There is a 
growing suspicion on the part of some, in the light 
of researches by Professor Etienne Gilson, that 
Luther may have derived his Nominalism from a 
distinct Augustinian Tradition of thought which 
was current in his community. But whatever be 
the source, there is no disputing the fact that 
Nominalism colored and influenced all his teach- 
ings. 

In taking over doctrines from the Nominalists 
Luther magnified them considerably. Occam, for 
example, taught that it was possible for nature to 
produce the same effects as grace; it was only in 
the present ordering of things that it was necessary. 
What Occam taught as possible, Luther taught as a 
fact. 

Furthermore, the theory of acceptation in the Oc- 
camist theology, became the theory of imputation 
in the Lutheran, and was applied, not only to grace, 


14 Sum occamice factionis. Denifle, “ Werke,” Weimar ed., VI, 
600. 

*® Summus dialecticus, scholasticorum doctorum sine dubio princeps 
et ingeniossimus — Jbid., p. 183. 


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PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM tog 


but to good works. Our works are good only be- 
cause God accepts them as such and imputes His 
goodness to us.*® 

This doctrine of imputation is found scattered 
throughout the whole of Lutheran theology. Even 
in his Commentary on the Romans, Luther en- 
deavors to show that imputed righteousness is the 
principal doctrine advocated by St. Paul. “God 
has willed to save us, not by our own, but by extrane- 


ous righteousness and wisdom, not by such as is 


in us or produced by our inner self, but by that 
which comes to us from elsewhere. . . . “ Again, 
he writes, ““ we must rest altogether on an extrane- 
ous and foreign righteousness.” ™ 

Since righteousness does not come from works, for 
works come from a corrupted human nature which 
can produce nothing good, we should therefore, and 
so much the more, cling toimputation. “ Our works 
are nothing, we find in ourselves nothing but 
thoughts which accuse us—vwhere shall we find 
defenders? Nowhere but in Christ. ... He has 
done enough.”** 

Man ever remains sinful, but the sin is not im- 
puted to him; he is accounted righteous by the 
imputation of something which is quite foreign to 
him, namely the righteousness of Christ. “The 
Christian faith differs from the faith and religion 
of the Popes and the Turks, etc., for by it, in spite of 


16 Quia non essent in se bona, nisi quia Deus reputat ea bona. Et tan- 
tum sunt vel non sunt quantum ille reputat vel non reputat. (Denifle), 
Fecker 11, 196. 17 (Grisar), “ Cod. Vat. Palat.” 1826 fol. 77. 

18 (Grisar), “ Schol. Rom.” p. 44. 


IIO RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


his consciousness of sin, a man, amidst afflictions 
and the fear of death continues to hope that God 
for Christ’s sake will not impute to him his sin.” 

“We hide our injustice behind God as a screen ”; 
Christ’s merits cover us like the wings of a hen. 
Christ is our “ mother-hen.” ** The justice of Christ 
covers us, and when we go before God to be judged 
it is not the sinner He perceives but the screen — 
Christ. Our justification then is something extrin- 
sic to our sinfulness,™ it is a covering over that 
which on the inside is full of filth and corruption. 
In other words, we are really like “ whitened sepul- 
chres,” outside clean, but inside full of dead men’s 
bones. The imputation saves, and not righteous- 
ness. We need have faith in Christ, and despite our 
sinfulness we shall be saved in the next world and 
imputed righteous in this. It is just this kind of 
theology which exaggerated itself into that remark- 
able letter he wrote to Melanchton on August 1, 
1521. “God does not save those who merely fancy 
themselves sinners. Bea sinner and sin boldly, but 
believe more boldly still. (“ Esto peccator et pecca 
fortiter, sed fortius in fide.) * 


These are the two forces which prepared the way 


19 (Grisar), Weimar ed., p. 360. 

20 « Finer muss des andern Schanddeckel sein.” Fecker 11, p. 334. 
Et ego semper predico de Christo, gallina nostra. (Grisar), Weimar ed., 
p- 31. Ecce impossibilis est lex propter carnem; verumtamen Christus 
impletionem suam nobis impertit, dum se ipsum gallinam nobis exhibet, 
ut sub alas eius confugiamus et per eius impletionem nos quoque legem 
impleamus. Jbid., p. 35. 

21 “Tdeo recte dixi, quod extrinsecum nobis est omne bonum nos- 
trum, quod est Christus.” (Denifle), Fecker 11, pp. 114-115. 

22 (Grisar), “ Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 208. 


Jae 
Mit? 


Rees, 


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PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 111 


for the Lutheran distortion of the notion of grace, 
viz., his doctrine concerning the invincibility of 
concupisence and the intrinsic corruption of human 
nature, and which may possibly have been derived 
from his experience, and secondly, the Nominalist 
influence which asserted that the supernatural was 
acceptable, not because it was really worth more 
than the natural, but merely because God willed to 
accept it as such. From this Luther derived his 
notion of the zmputability of the merits of Christ. 

Two consequences flow from these influences, 
both of which endure to the present day, but under 
different forms: 


1. Religion ceases to be the sum of man’s service to God, 
but becomes the sum of God’s service to man. In other 
words, religion becomes anthropo-centric, instead of theo- 
centric. 

2. The traditional notion of the supra-position of nature 
and grace gives way to the notion of their juxtaposition. 


1. Religion becomes God’s service toman. Nom- 
inalism in philosophy denies that the mind can 
attain the real, and asserts that that with which we 
are in contact is only an effigy of the real. Medieval 
Nominalism is modern subjectivism. Nominalism 
in theology asserts that the divine never really at- 
tains the natural; it is imputed to it; it is something 
extrinsic to it, but never one with it. 

Now, if the mind knows not the real, but only its 
effigy, then, as St. Thomas says, in his Summa,” 
all knowledge is mental instead of real. The mind 


28's) G. 96 atte % ad 4. 


112 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


then becomes the centre around which the world 
revolves. This is a Copernican Revolution long 
before the time of Kant, it being in germ in the de- 
cadent Scholastics. So too, in the spiritual order, 
if the divine, the supernatural, and grace, do not 
attain the natural in its inmost being, then there can 
be nothing in the natural as such which can make 
it pleasing to God, but there is much in the super- 
natural which may make it pleasing for the 
natural. It was this very implication hidden in the 


theology of the Reformer, which his friend Staupitz 


pointed out to him in a letter: “ You see that the 
grace by which we are in the friendship of God is not 
that by which we please God, but that by which God 
pleases us and makes Himself agreeable tous.”™* It 
is Christ who pleases us ; we can do nothing, for “we 
arealostlump.” Righteousness is nothing intrinsic, 
and organic, entering into the very life of our soul; 
it is something extrinsic, mechanical, crystalline, 
remaining ever outside ourselves like a cloak. We 
cannot please God, but God can please us, and this 
in sO many words means that man and not God is 
the centre and object of religion. 

This of course is not openly manifest in Lutheran 
principles of reform, but the germ of it is there as 
Staupitz well saw. The explication comes later on 


and reaches its full bloom in our own day when ~ 


philosophers like Professor Alexander make man 


24 «“ Tterum cernis, quod gratia gratum faciens non est illa qua Deo 
placemus, sed Deus nobis placet et gratus est.” Libellus de ex. eterne 
predestinationis fratris Joannis de Staupitz. No. 131, cited by Janssen- 
Pastor. 


PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 113 


not only the centre of religion but even the very 
creator of God. 

2. A second conclusion to be drawn from this 
theology is that of the juxtaposition of nature and 
grace. The traditional position was that nature 
and grace were related one to the other as perfectio 
perfectibile.** Nature had no claim to grace as 
intellect had no claim to faith. But when the super- 
natural did come, it did not destroy nature but 
elevated it, there being in the natural a kind of 
obediential potency which makes it passively recep- 
tive for just such perfection. Nature and grace then 
were related as a perfection to a thing which could 
be perfected by a gift. 

But with Luther, nature and grace ceased to be 
related in this way. Nature was bad to the core and 
irremediably so, while grace was just an imputation. 
One was related to the other as a cloak to our 
shoulders. In other words, grace and nature were 
juxtaposed one to the other; one is foreign and 
extrinsic to the other in every possible way. 

The supernatural order is merely an imputation 
and not a renovation. And in this juxtaposition 
of the natural and the supernatural is to be found 
the germs of all the juxtapositions from that day on 
to this: juxtapositions which blossom out into such 
things as opposition between science and religion, 
faith and science, authority and experience, mystic- 
ism and logic. History is full of this unfolding of 
error which began with the separation of the Head 


sae kt ae es ie ako Oe 


114 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


and the Body of the Mystic Christ in which, as Mr. 
Chesterton has put it, “The Reformers went to 
pontifical man to pull off the mitre and pulled 
the head off with it,” and from that day on to 
this the world has seen a body staggering down 
the centuries without a head, finally satisfying itself 
to be just a mere body made up of the brother- 
hood of men, forgetful that we can never call 
one another “ brother” until we have learned to 
call God “ Father.” 

While it is not to be denied that a Reformation 
was needed, it was a reformation of discipline that 
was needed and not a reformation of faith. Some- 
what similar conditions presented themselves to 
Gregory VII, and he reformed not faith but disci- 
pline. The sixteenth century marked a double 
reformation, one of faith on the part of the Reform- 
ers, the other of discipline on the part of the Church 
in the Council of Trent. 

And it will always be the wonder of those who 
study doctrines as well as men, how certain thinkers 
can point to Luther as the great apostle of progress 
when his initial principle — the intrinsic corruption 
of human nature — makes all progress impossible. 
It is equally strange to see how he showed the world 
“true and lasting union with Christ” when Christ 
remained something extrinsic and foreign to us, like 
a cloak or a covering. Such a theory does little 
credit to man for it makes him irremediably vitiated, 
and little credit to Christ for it reduces His Redemp- 
tion to a mere nominal and putative one. Finally, it 


PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 1s 


is rather difficult to understand why Luther should 
be upheld as the great apostle of reason when he so 
much despised it. Even Professor McGiffert, who is 
not at all remiss in glorifying modern theology, has 
this to say of Luther: “He spoke with great con- 
tempt of the human reason, and denounced both 
schoolmen and humanists alike because they 
depended upon it; and while in this he was more 
extreme than his associates, the depreciation of 
natural reason in connection with divine things 
was characteristic of the reformation movement as 
a whole.” ** 


The Evolution of the Lutheran Juxtaposition. 


Luther became the source of a twofold evolution 
of religious thinking; one current which took up 
nature, which he juxtaposed to grace, worked itself 
out by the denial of the transcendent; the other, 
which took up grace, which he juxtaposed to nature, 
worked itself out by the assertion of the immanent. 
From the objective side one current tends to reduce 
grace to nature, the other to elevate nature to grace; 
from the subjective side one current tends to absorb 
faith in reason, and the other to equate reason 
and faith. Religion in the successors of Luther 
bases itself either on a faculty of nature and 
develops along rationalistic lines, or else bases 
itself upon the individual’s need of a divine power, 
and develops along the lines of mysticism and sen- 
timentalism. 


26 A.C. McGiffert, “ Protestant Thought before Kant,” p. 113. 


116 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Denial of the Extrinsic. The Rationalistic 
Current.” 


It was particularly the Socinians and the Armin- 
ians who developed the rational current in Luther’s 
principles. The Socinians took as their formal 
method the examination of religious truth in the cold 
light of reason. They accepted Sacred Scripture as 
the revealed word of God, but since it requires inter- 
pretation, this interpretation must be done in the 
light of reason. Reason is the organ by which man 
knows, receives, comprehends and judges Divine 
Revelation. Certain universal axioms and common 
notions (axiomata universalia atque communes 
notiones) are set up by reason as being uncondi- 
tionally true in the relation to religious doctrine; 
é.g., a just person does not punish a good person in 
place of an evil one; a person who is from another 
is not from God. 

In the light of these principles the Trinity was 
rejected as being opposed to simplicity; the pre- 
existence of Christ was also denied and therefore 
His Divinity; consequently, His Passion and 
Death were a mere example to us and a pledge of 
forgiveness, but operated no redemption of the hu- 
man race. 


27 A hetérodox Catholic current manifested itself in Baius, for whom 
the supernatural order is reduced to the natural order; in Jansenius, 
for whom justification is not due to the imputation of Christ’s merits 
by faith (Luther), nor by obedience to the law (Baius) but in actual 
help of grace which enables us to overcome what he called the terrestrial 
delight or attraction; and finally in Quesnel, who combined the errors of 
both. Justification for all three was something accidental and even 
sentimental. 


PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 117 


Socinianism did not last long, the political situa- 
tion of Poland hastening its decline. In 1658 the 
Diet of Warsaw prohibited its confession under 
penalty of death. It found its way into England 
with John Biddle (1622) and into Germany with 
Soner of Altdorf (1612). Holland prohibited all 
Socinian writings in 1599. But its seed was sown 
and in the course of time it became one of the 
important harbingers of Rationalism. 

What is important in the history of Socinians is 
the decline it effected in the belief of the supernatu- 
ral. Luther believed both in the power and the light 
of the supernatural, i.e., grace and the Scriptures. 
This sect denied the power and retained the light. 
The “ function of Christianity was reduced to the 
revelation of truth in order that man might know 
the way of life, which once known, it 1s in his power 
to follow. This estimate of Christianity prevailed 
more and more among the Rationalists. ‘The Gos- 
pel ceased to mean supernatural power given from 
above and came to mean only supernatural light.” * 

The Arminians who followed the same train of 
thought reacted directly against the unnatural cold 
decretum horribile of Calvinistic predestination, 
under the leadership of the one from whom they 
have taken their name, Jacob Arminius, Professor 
at the University of Leyden. But there is much 
more in their movement than this. In spirit it is a 
continuation of a current of rationalism. “The 


28 A.C. McGiffert, “The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas,” p. 20; 
also Hastings, Socinianism, “Ency. of Religion and Ethics,” Vol. X, 
p- 652. 


118 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Arminians were infected with Socinianism. The 
immoral antimonianism taught by the more ignor- 


ant Calvinistic ministers in England as a direct re- 


sult of Calvin’s doctrine of election gave them an 
opportunity of appealing to mens’ reason, and the 
appeal was made to men whose conception of the 
Church and the Sacraments was lower than that of 
Calvin and who were therefore more prepared to 
accept a reduced Christology.” ” 

“ By its underling principles of equality and free- 
dom it was more perfectly fitted than its rival 
system (Calvinism) for a period of intellectual 
transition. Arminianism stood generally for the 
strengthening of the scientific temper and for 
the principle of moderation. ... It strove to 
emancipate exegesis from the thralldom of dog- 
matics .. . Arminianism was a protest against 
the mystical interpretation of the internal world as 
a sufficient exponent and infallible judge of the 
external.” *° 

The premises of Luther, the Arminians and the 
Socinians were the same, but their conclusions were 
different. Luther depreciated reason while the 
Socinians, and to a lesser extent, the Arminians 
glorified it. What was common to them all was the 
denial of the transcendent or what they called the 
extrinsic. Luther considered the Church as ex- 
trinsic, the Socinians and the Arminians considered 


29 Leighton Pullan, “Religion Since the Reformation,” 2d ed. 
1924, p. 138; A. B. D. Alexander, “Shaping Forces in Religious 
Thought,” 1920, p. 67. 

80 Hastings, Arminianism, “Ency. of Religion and Ethics,” 


PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 119 


grace extrinsic, and succeeding generations march- 
ing under the banner of a revolt which ends in the 
absorption of grace and faith into nature and reason, 
denied even supernatural light, and then the Scrip- 
tures ceased to be revered as the Word of God. 
Luther distorted the greatest of spiritual realities, 
namely grace, and the Socinians and Arminians 
eliminated it. It now remains to develop a sub- 
stitute for it. 


The Assertion of the Immanent. The Philosophy 
of Individualism. 


The separation and even the juxtaposition of 
nature and grace, it was said, resulted in a double 
evolution, one stressing nature, the other grace. 
The first developed into a kind of theological ra- 
tionalism which we have just briefly traced. The 
second current starts not with reason but with the 
heart and develops in the direction of the spiritual 
and mystical rather than the rational and human- 
istic. 

Luther sounded the keynote of the philosophy 
and the theology of the immanent in announcing his 
doctrine of the immanence of justification by faith, 
the personal experience of justification and the pri- 
vate interpretation of Sacred Scriptures. The gen- 
esis of these doctrines resulted in a kind of 
religious romanticism in which the individual be- 
lieved himself to be in direct communication with 
God Who reveals Himself to man by prophecies, 
miracles, visions and the like. 


120 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


The forms in which this individualism developed 
may be reduced to three: 
Dogmatic individualism 
Mystical individualism 
Moral or pietistic individualism. 


Dogmatic individualism was represented chiefly 
by Luther as we have already indicated in 
treating his doctrines. In brief it was the problem 
of justification posited in the first person: “How 
am I justified?” This form of individualism is 
familiar to all under the form of private interpreta- 
tion of Sacred Scripture. 

Mystical individualism stressed the interior illu- 
mination of the soul without much emphasis on the 
moral or practical side. For some this communica- 
tion of God is transitory and manifests itself from 
time to time in visions, ecstacies, and such like; for 
others there is a continuous real inworking of God 
in the human heart.** Dogmatic Individualism 
asserted the right of the individual to be his own 
interpreter of Sacred Scripture. Mystical Individu- 
alism, on the contrary, held not so much for pri- 
vate interpretation as private revelation. God is 
now thought of as revealing Himself to each indi- 
vidual. Hence the Mystical Individualists were 
quite out of sympathy with Sacred Scripture as a 
rule of faith: it was too cold and impersonal. Rev- 
elation must be personal and intimate. No one 
now was considered as an interpreter of the Bible, 
but every man was his own Bible. 


$1 Pijinjer-Hastie, ‘“ The Christian Philosophy of Religion from the 
Reformation to Kant,” p. 209 ff. 


nee 


PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 121 


The slightest acquaintance with the religious 
movements of this period manifests a general dis- 
trust of individual interpretation of Sacred Scrip- 
tures. But instead of returning to a mystic body, 
the Church, as the official guide on these matters, 
the later reforms had recourse to direct manifesta- 
tion of God to each soul. Examples of this tendency 
are numerous. Melchior Hoffmann for example, 
(1533) and his associate Stifel believed them- 
selves the recipients of divine visions which mani- 
fested to them that the end of the world would 
come at eight o’clock in the morning of the 
third of October, 1533. David Joris (1501- 
1556), one of the Anabaptists of Holland, main- 
tained that in his early life visions and revela- 
tions taught him the speedy return of the Lord. 
Whenever he was asked to prove his doctrine by 
Sacred Scripture, he repudiated the challenge as 
human wisdom and philosophical curiosity, assert- 
ing that the doctrine was revealed to him immedi- 
ately from heaven. Hans Niclas (1502-1577) on 
the same divine authority, believed the world 
divided into three periods: in the first, law rules 
under sin; in the second, Christ rules; and in the 
third, Hans Niclas himself rules through love, for 
God united Himself to him and made of him a 
living tabernacle in order to proclaim His works to 
the world. Quakerism under George Fox, Robert 
Barclay and William Penn believed that the “ in- 
ward light” differed from the light of individual 
reason, and that salvation is effected through the 
light of Christ which does not come through creeds 


122 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


or dogmas or even calmly, but by a sudden seizure 
which is accompanied by convulsive movements of 
the body, whence the name Quakers. 

In these individuals and sects it was not Sacred 
Scripture so much as revelations, visions, internal 
lights and ecstacies which revealed divine truth. 
There were other individuals who carried on a com- 
mon polemic against too high an estimate of the 
external letter and strove above all else to delve di- 
rectly into the depths of the Deity. One of the best 
known of this group is Michael Servetus (1511— 
1553), the well known physician, and geographer, 
who after the fashion of Nicolas of Cusa, believed 


that God communicated Himself to all things with- © 


out which there would be no being or subsistence. 
The world is therefore identical with God in essence. 
Thomas Miinzer (1490-1537) went so far in his de- 
preciation of Sacred Scripture as to assert that “it 
availeth nothing even though one should eat a 
hundred thousand Bibles.” No less opposed was 
Sebastian Frank (1495-1543) who declared that all 
death in the Church comes from a literal under- 
standing of the Scriptures. Faith, he said, does not 
consist in adhering to certain beliefs as true, but in 
experiencing the facts of faith. Valentin Weigel 
(1533-1588) in his “ Dialogus de Christianismo ” 
presents to the reader a debate between a layman 
who expounds Wiegel’s ideas, and a preacher, rep- 
resentative of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. Christ 
appears and decides in favor of the layman. The 
preacher, though fortified by sacraments, dies and 


PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 123 


is buried in hell, but the layman, because of his 
reliance on direct and personal revelation is saved. 
Schwenkenfeldt (1490-1562) taught that man be- 
longs to the animal world because of his body and 
to the spiritual because of his soul. Hence what is 
external can only move the external man, whereas 
only God can move the spiritual, and this He does 
without intervention of a book or a dogma or a 
church. Carlstadt (1541) and von Hohenheim 
(1493-1541) though differing in expression yet held 
as a common denominator the notion that the 
eternal Christ takes precedence over the historical, 
and the Living Word over the Written Word. 
Moral or Pietistic Individualism: ‘The mere 
revelation or communication of God to the soul was 
found to be insufficient, unless it made for the im- 
provement of the individual and the perfection of 
the society. As Cornhert (1522-1590), secretary of 
the city of Harlem, used to say: “‘ Christianity does 
not consist in the lip, but in life. It is in the walk, 
not in the talk.” Theobald Thamer (1569) soon 
realized after his experiences as an army chaplain 
that the reformation doctrines, the overflow of 
sentiment and gushy sentimentalism had not im- 
proved the morals of the times. Johann Arndt 
(1555-1621) and Joachim Betkins (1663) lamented 
the passing of the true imitation of Christ. Uni- 
versities took up the reform for practical piety and 
made it their aim “ rather to save one soul than 
make a hundred scholars.” It was this craving for 
true piety which prepared the way for Pietism which 


124 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


found its best expression in Jacob Spener (1635- 
1705) who attributed all godlessness to the exag- 
geration of dogmas. Hence, in 1670, he founded 
Collegia Pietatis, that is private assemblies in his 
own house for pious readings and mutual edifica- 
tion. In answer to an attack by Lutheran 
theologians he wrote “ Theology of all Believing 
Christians and Upright Theologians” (1680), 
wherein he set forth the principle that while human 
industry plays some part in the understanding of the 
Word of God, its real sense is grasped by an I]lumi- 
nation of the Holy Spirit; and since a requisite for 
such an illumination is righteous living, no un- 
regenerate man can possess a true knowledge of God 
or be a good theologian. 

As a constructive force Pietism bettered morals, 
but as a disintegrating force Pietism was twofold: 
“it undermined respect for dogmatic theology in 
general, turning men’s attention from orthodoxy 
to life; and it reduced the traditional system to com- 
paratively low terms by distinguishing its essential 
from its unessential tenets.” 

In England the reform along practical lines 
centred chiefly around Puritanism. Heylyn gives 
the year 1565 as the actual date at which “these 
Zwinglian or Calvinistic factions began to be first 
known by the name of Puritans . . . which name 
has been ever since appropriate to them because of 
their pretending to greater purity in the service of 
God than was held forth unto them in the common 


82 A. C. McGiffert, “The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas,” p. 10. 


PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 125 


prayer-book.* ‘The religious principle which gov- 
erned them was the inner word of the Holy Spirit 
which was set above the mere external letter. “ As 
if the prediction of the prophet Joel were fulfilled, 
everyone appealed to the word of the Lord which he 
had heard: as to an immediate revelation which he 
had received, or to the Spirit of God which spake in 
him.” ** For the Puritan emphasis was laid on the 
fact that “it is not the head but the heart which 
makes the Christian.” * 

The whole Evangelical movement in England is 
also to be traced to this yearning for a more practical 
piety. Professor McGiffert in comparing the two, 
writes, “Like German pietism, English evangeli- 
calism was practical in its aims and methods, but 
it had great influence in the sphere of religious 
thought. It is a fact of cardinal importance that 
it took its rise in a period dominated not by scho- 
lasticism, but by rationalism. It was in fact, in no 
small part, a reaction against rationalism in all its 
forms. ‘This gave it, in spite of its kinship with 
German pietism a very different character in many 
respects.” *° 


83 « History of the Reformation,” Vol. II, p. 421. 

84 Piinjer, op. cit., p. 213 

35 “ History of England,” Vol. 1, p. 81. Taine writes, “ His speech 
stuffed with scriptural quotations, his names and the names of his children 
drawn from the Bible, bore witness that his thoughts were confined to the 
terrible world of the seers and ministers of divine vengeance. Personal 
asceticism grew into public tyranny. The Puritan proscribed pleasure 
as an enemy for others as well as for himself. Ornaments, pictures and 
statues were pulled down and mutilated. The only pleasures permitted 
were the singing of Psalms through the nose, the edification of long 
sermons, the excitement of acrimonious controversies.” ‘History of 
English Literature,” Vol. 2, p. 323. 

86 “ Protestant Thought before Kant,” p. 163. 


126 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Summarizing what has been said above, Luther 
put an abyss between nature and grace, forever 
making it impossible for the latter to perfect the 
former. Perhaps he did not see the consequences of 
his principles, but his followers did. Some insisting 
on nature, such as the Socinians and the Arminians, 
rejected supernatural power or grace as extrinsic 
and unnecessary. Others, insisting on grace, such 
as those who developed mystical individualism with 
stress on interior illumination of the soul, and those 
who developed Pietistic individualism with stress 
on personal righteousness, treated the supernatural 
as natural and immanent. Luther brought the in- 
dividual into prominence by asserting his rights 
against a mystic corporation, and by putting into his 
hands the Sacred Scriptures which he might inter- 
pret as he saw fit. But his followers glorified the 
individual still more by making the individual a 
kind of Scripture inspired ‘directly by Almighty 
God. Though varying in form, the fact still re- 
mains that authority, Divine Light and Power more 
and more became immanent in man. He became 
free as regards a Church and free as regards a Scrip- 
ture. It is this tendency to emphasize immanence 
in religion which constitutes the Philosophy of In- 
dividualism. A new current cuts in through this 
development; in fact, it was already manifest before 
Pietism, and that is the current of Rationalism. 
Its development led to the Philosophy of Fact. 


CHAPTER V 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 


ENE DESCARTES marks the beginning 
of a new period in the development of the 
contemporary idea of religion thanks to the 

new juxtaposition he introduced into the world 
of spiritual realities. As Luther juxtaposed nature 
and grace, so Descartes juxtaposed the intelligibile 
and the sensible; as Luther distorted grace by mak- 
ing it extrinsic to nature and not its perfection so, 
too, Descartes distorted intellect by making it ex- 
trinsic and independent of the sensible and not its 
perfection. 

The origins of the Cartesian system are to be 
traced to two influences, one belonging to the past, 
the other to his own times. Descartes’ relation to 
the past is not so marked, for he cared little for 
tradition or history. Nevertheless, it is true that the 
Protestant current did have some effect on him, for 
its doctrine of the immanence of spirit and experi- 
ence, which was put in the place of the living word 
of the Mystic body on the one hand, and the author- 
ity of Sacred Scriptures on the other, naturally 
grew into a species of rationalism. When the inner 
experience grew cold it was only a matter of time 

127 


128 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


when natural reason would be considered the inner 
light. 

Then, too, there was the negative influence of a 
decadent Scholasticism against which he reacted, 
the dominant characteristics of which have been 
summed up by Professor De Wulf: 


1. The prevalence of schools, parties and routine. The 
religious corporations accept the hegemony of one of their 
doctors. The universities flock to a standard and it is not 
rare to find the choice of a philosopher determined by politics 
or intrigue. 

2. The abuse of dialectical discussion increased. The vital 
doctrines of scholasticism were neglected or else corrupted. 
In the seventeenth century manuals compared matter and 
form to lovers who courted, married and divorced and con- 
tracted new unions. 

3. The scholastics defend themselves badly or else not at — 
all, against the philosophers of the Renaissance.* 


Hamelin * has urged that very little of the philos- 
ophy of Descartes is to be found in the past, and in 
support of his thesis urged the following points: 
the philosophers of the Renaissance were generally | 
Pantheistic, ¢.g., Bruno and Patritius, and Des- 
cartes was anything but a Pantheist. The physics 
of the Renaissance was not conducive to Cartesi- 
anism, it being for the most part, qualitative and 
vitalist, ¢.g., Telesius with his twofold principles of 
heat and cold. Montaigne and Charron, the French 
skeptics, had little or no influence on Cartesian 
doubt except perhaps to give it a certain smack of 


1 “ History of Medieval Philosophy,” Vol. 2, pp. 294, 5. 
2 “Le Systeme de Descartes,” 2d ed., 1921. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 129 


antiquity. Mathematics offered little, for Descar- 
tes himself avows that he did not read Viete until he 
was thirty-one, that is at an epoch when his geom- 
etry was already well formed. 

Though the past contributed little positively to 
his formation there was a spirit budding in his time 
which did much to mould his life and his works, 
and that is the scientific spirit in its experimental 
and its mathematical aspects. Experiment was the 
life of the age. Da Vinci called it the “unique 
interpreter” of nature; and under the inspiration 
of Bacon, such men as Rondelet, Visale, Aselli and 
Harvey used it in their quest for forms, essences and 
qualities. Mathematics, too, was taking new 
strides. Galileo has the honor of being the first to 
apply mathematics tophysics according to the spirit 
of modern science. But although Galileo gave ex- 
amples of the positive method he never developed 
the science of method, in the sense that he discussed 
whether one could substitute quantities for qualities 
in the physical world. This task remained for Des- 
cartes. Hamelin’s contention is probably correct, 
for none of the scientists of the time exercised a 
direct influence on him, but certainly the spirit of 
the times did. His system as a system comes from 
within, and here we pass on to study its genesis in 
his own mind. 

When Descartes came to study the relation be- 
tween the decadent Scholasticism he had learned in 
Fleche and the new scientific spirit of the age, he 
became conscious of what he believed was a conflict 


130 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


between the two. In the first part of his “ Discourse 
on Method ” he tells us that the old philosophy is 
speculative whereas the new science is practical; the 
old philosophy was interested only in essences, 
forms and natures and qualities, while the new 
scientific temper concerned itself with quantities. 
In the face of this opposition between philosophy 
and science Descartes could see only one way out,® 
and that was by a completely new approach to the 
subject. Having falsely identified Scholasticism 
with the old physics, it was only natural for him 
to repudiate Scholasticism in repudiating the new 
physics. He made war on Scholasticism from the 
beginning to clear the ground for his new system. 
Scholasticism was something to be exterminated 
at all costs— ante omnia exterminanda.* Once 
Scholasticism was out of the way he laid anew the 
foundations of thought. The Aristotelian method 
proceeded from physics to mathematics, or more 


3 Really there was another solution which was given by the Scho- 
lastics themselves before their philosophy degenerated, viz., to distinguish 
Physics or the science of pure observation from Natural Philosophy 
which was Physics studied in the light of metaphysical principles. 
The physics might change, but this in no way affected the metaphysical 
principles brought to bear upon it. The decadent Scholastics probably 
were the only ones Descartes knew well, though he did have a copy of 
the Summa with him in Holland. He forgot entirely the prudent 
experimental probabilism of the great Scholastics, Comm de Coelo, lib. 
a lect 17 (Licet enim talis) ; De Boet. de Trinitate q. 4 art. 2 ad 8; i q. 
32 art 1 ad 2; Met. lib. 12 lect 1o—. 

4 “(Euvres,” Adams-Tannery ed., Vol. V. p. 176. He felt dis- 
satisfaction with it even while in school (‘ Discours de la Methode,” 
Flammarion ed., 2d part, p. 13). Speaking of the philosophy which he 
had at Fleche, he wrote: “ I should like very much to read over a little 
of their philosophy, something I have not done in twenty years, to see 
if it would not seem a little better to me now than it did then.” 
A.-T., Vol. 3, 30 Sept. 1640, p. 185. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 131 


simply from the sensible to the intelligible. His 
method was just the contrary; he proceeded from 
metaphysics to physics or from the intelligible to 
the sensible. 

He proposed a system which would unite both 
metaphysics and physics —the accord or union 
of which he believed Scholasticism could no longer 
effect. It is probable that this idea of a method 
came to him at Neuberg on the Danube in the year 
1619, where “he found leisure to enjoy the com- 
pany of his own thoughts.” ‘There he dreamt of 
some great universal science which would unlock all 
knowledge, not only that of metaphysics, but also 
that of physics and science. 

The new method must be one of invention, he 
argued, and this rules logic out of court for “ logic 
is only a dialectic which teaches the mode of ex- 
pounding to others what we already know, or even 
of speaking much without judgment of what we do 
not know, by which means it rather corrupts than 
increases good sense.” * Logic does not invent, but 
algebra and geometry do.° But the trouble with 
algebra and geometry is that both are slaves either 
to figures or to symbols. Descartes gets out of this 
difficulty by employing algebra to express geometric 
relations, and in so doing invented analytic geom- 
etry or the method of expressing by equations the 
properties of geometrical figures. In this way he 
found what he called: “ universal mathematics, be- 


5 Preface to the Principles; cf. ‘ Discours de la Methode,” 2d 


part, p. 13. 
6 Regulz 10, 14, 15. 


132 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


cause it contains all the elements which make of the 
other sciences part of mathematics.” * 

This was an important step in the history of 
mathematics,® and no less an important one in — 
furnishing him the clue to the method he was 
seeking. 

Since he had found that there was a generalization 
applicable to universal mathematics, why should 
there not be one applicable to the whole field of 
knowledge? Why should there not be a science of 
knowledge which would unfold truths in the same 
way mathematics unfolds them? 

The answer to this question is “ The Discourse on 
Method,” whose purpose he tells us is to do away 
with the sterile logic and syllogisms of the School,’ 
and to set up in their place his own method founded 
on mathematics “ which the geometricians are wont 
to make use of.”*® His first rule is “ never to ac- 
cept a thing as true which I do not clearly know to 
be such.” This is what may be called the “ principle — 
of evidence.” Nothing will be accepted except what 
is evident. But the Aristotelian categories of form, 
essence, the metaphysics, logic and physics of Scho- 
lasticism are not so evident —hence these are all 
condemned in principle. 

While this method is being applied Descartes 
excludes certain subjects from the application of his 
method. ™ 

7 Regula 4. 
8 Gaston Milhaud, “ Descartes Savant,” 1921, p. 124 ff. 


® “ Discours de la Methode,” p. 13. 
10 '1bid.; Po 14s os > Tbe, Oe Gs 


Miter ivLOSOPHY OF FACT ~~ 133 


I. Religion is not to be included in the examination of 
reason, for truths of religion do not fall under its jurisdiction. 
We must believe them, not examine them. “ We must,” 
says Descartes, “seek neither to adapt them to our reason 
nor to adapt our reason to them.” ‘They belong to another 
domain. 

2. He then makes a distinction between the sphere of 
knowledge and of conduct. He submits to a provisional 
ethics which is to be replaced by definitive ethics only when 
the science is completed. 

3. More definitely and concretely, he will not apply his 
method to political, ethical and social questions. 


With these exceptions philosophy and science will 
be judged solely on the grounds of rational evi- 
dence. Anything which is not clear will be rejected. 
In the fourth part of his Discourse he proceeds (a) 
to reject anything and everything of which he has 
the least doubt; (b) to distrust the senses because 
they have sometimes deceived him; (c) to distrust 
reasoning, for sometimes the results of the positive 
sciences are erroneous. (d) It is even legitimate 
to suppose that an evil genius takes delight in 
making him err, even when he wishes to see the 
truth. 

As a general rule, then, consent to any proposi- 
tion will be withheld until it is manifestly clear. 

Is there any proposition which is not affected by 
this doubt? There is one, and only one. My senses 
may deceive me, my reasonings may be false, and 
evil genius may delude, but there is one thing of 
which there can be no doubt. If I am mistaken it 1s 
because I am, and this truth cogito, ergo sum, is “ so 
evident and so certain that the most extravagant 


134. RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


doubt of skeptics is unable to shake it.” This he 
takes as the first principle of his philosophy. 

From this Descartes immediately goes on to prove 
the existence of God, from the idea of perfection 
which he has and which certainly could not have 
come from experience. It must therefore be a 
“stamp left by the workman on His work.” ” 

The existence of the soul is proved in the same 
manner—a proof well known to those who have 
the slightest acquaintance with Descartes. 


The Juxtaposition of the Intelligible and the 
Sensible. 


So much for the origins, both extra-mental and 
mental, of the method of Descartes. But wherein 
does his system present characteristics which make 
it an epoch in the history of philosophy? What 
revolution did he introduce into thought which 
makes him one of the prophets of the modern idea of 
religion? Descartes distorted intellect, the second 
great spiritual reality, by juxtaposing it to the sen- 
sible. This is brought out clearly by recalling the 
various manifestations of this juxtaposition found 
in his system, vz., his peculiar theory concerning 
the relation of science and philosophy, his theory 
of knowledge, his theory of the relation between the 
soul and body and, finally, his doctrines concerning 
the relation between Theology and Philosophy. 

Descartes, it was said, failing to distinguish be- 
tween sciences of observation and Natural Philos- 


12 “ Discours de la Methode,” p. 23. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 13s 


ophy, which is the metaphysical reflection on these 
observed facts, fell into the error of believing Scho- 
lastic metaphysics antiquated and useless because 
its physics was useless. He wished to avoid that 
conflict between the two, and strove to bridge them 
in virtue of a new philosophy, which really never 
effected linking the two, but rather their separation. 
His solution was to invert the Aristotelian-Scholas- 
tic procedure of beginning with Physics as the first 
degree of abstraction and then working up to Meta- 
physics. He chose to begin with Metaphysics and 
then work down to Physics, in other words, to begin 
with the intellectual, the “clear and distinct” and 
only then find his way down to the sensible. In his 
Preface to the Principles he explicitly states “‘ Phi- 
losophy is like a tree, the roots of which is Meta- 
physics, the trunk of which is Physics, and all the 
other sciences are the branches.” ** In other words, 
he “closed his eyes,” “shut his ears,” turned away 
from the senses, and “effaced all the images of 
sensible things,” and thus completely upset the nor- 
mal procedure of the human mind, which begins with 
the world of experience as the raw material for the 
finished products of the intellectual. After stating 
that his Metaphysics was a preparation for his 
Physics, he continues in a remarkable confession 
which does not say too much for his sincerity: “ But 
you must not say so, please, for those who favor 
Aristotle would find great difficulty in approving it. 


18 Cf, H. Gouhier, ‘‘ La Pensée Religieuse de Descartes,” 1924, p. 
12. E. Gilson, “ L’Etudes de Philosophie Medievale,” 1921, p. 1153 
“La Doctrine Cartésienne de la Liberté et la Théologie, 1913. 


136 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


I hope that those who read them will accustom them- 
selves unconsciously to my principles and will rec- 
ognize the truth of them without seeing that they 
destroy Aristotle.” ** 

In a word, Descartes hoped to attain the real 
inside himself by reason, in the same way that man 
finds God in himself through the infused gifts of the 
Holy Spirit. Instead of using the natural procedure 
of the human mind of mounting to the intellectual 
through the doors of the sensible, the very way 
nature intended, he used the artificial procedure of 
methodic doubt, introductory to the revelation of 
the Cogito, and pretended to grasp the spiritual 
without the preamble of the material. He enclosed 
himself in a fixed and impenetrable world, Divine 
Veracity alone being the guarantee of correspond- 
ence with things — and this whole method of begin- 
ning with Metaphysics and then working down to 
Physics, is the beginning of a juxtaposition of the 
intelligible and the sensible which manifests itself 
more clearly in his theory of knowledge. 

Jacques Maritain, in a remarkable study of Des- 
cartes,” has developed this juxtaposition of the 
intelligible and the sensible by showing that for 
Descartes knowledge is intuitive as regards its 
method,” innate as regards its origin*’ and inde- 
pendent of things as regards its nature. Ideas for 
Descartes are only effigies of the real; what is 
grasped primarily and directly is not the real but 


14 “ (Euvres,” A—T., Vol. III, pp. 297, 298. 
15 “Tes Trois Reformateurs,” 1925, Chap. 2. 


16 Regula 2. 17 A-—T., Vol. VI, p. 112. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 137 


the thought — Cogito.** If the sensible is not nec- 
essary for the origin of our ideas, if the term of 
knowledge is not the real but the effigy of it, then 
the intellect becomes endowed with the quality of 
aseity and is independent of things. He wished to 
bestow liberty on the intellect in the sense that 
he desired to free it from the determination of the 
sensible—and in doing so distorted knowledge. 
Knowledge is like entrance into the Kingdom of 
Heaven; it can be gained only by humbling our- 
selves. In the true procedure knowledge humbles 
itself by going down to the material for its deter- 
mination and forthwith is exalted to the realms of 
the spiritual. Descartes refused to humble his 
mind by going down to things, but immediately ex- 
alted it by appealing to Divine Veracity as a guar- 
antee of the real, and for its exaltation was destined 
to be humbled by locking the mind forever in the 
narrow corridor of a Cogito. Then and there began 
the great modern problem of knowledge: how pass 
from the mental to the real? “ This is the central 
problem of Cartesian metaphysics, namely, the pas- 
sage from thought to existence. Thought alone is 
indissolubly inherent to itself. How then, and by 
what right and in what sense can one afhrm exist- 
ences? ”*® “The Cartesian reform is responsible 
for that strange condition in which we see humanity 
today, so powerful over nature, so informed and 
skillful in dominating the physical universe, but so 
weak and disorientated before intelligible realities 


18 A—T., Vol. VII, Third Meditation, p. 160. 
19 M. Boutroux, Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, Mai 1894. 


138 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


to which the humility of wisdom made us formerly 
an heir. To fight against bodies, it is equipped as a 
god; to fight against the spirit, it has lost all its 
arnistiss 

Besides the juxtaposition of the intelligible and 
the sensible in all the phases just outlined, there are 
yet other juxtapositions among which may be men- 
tioned that of the body and the soul, which is simply 
another way of putting that of the intelligible and 
the sensible. For Descartes, the essence of the soul 
was thought, and the essence of matter was ex- 
tension. This necessarily brought up the problem 
of the relation between the two, since their natures 
are so diverse. It is the problem of knowledge in 
psychological dress. The Palatine Princess felt the 
difficulty —in those days princesses were philoso- 
phers —and she asked Descartes how the one could 
ever act on the other. Descartes finally offers ex- 
cuse that he has to go to Utrecht whither he was 
summoned to explain something that he wrote 
‘“‘ about one of their ministers. This compels me to 
end now, as I have to try to find a way of getting 
free of their chicaneries as soon as possible.” ™ 

And the problem which really was an illegitimate 
one from the beginning has never since been solved. 

A final form of the juxtaposition of the intelligible 
and the sensible is to be found in his peculiar ideas 
concerning the relationship between theology and 
reason, or faith and science. Theology for Des- 
cartes is equivalent to the unintelligible. “ Re- 


20 Jacques Maritain, of. cit., p. 115. 
21 “Tettres de Descartes,” Cousin ed., Vol. IX, p. 127. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 139 


vealed truths are above our intelligence, and I would 
not dare submit them to the feebleness of my reason: 
I believe that to undertake their examination and to 
succeed, it would be necessary to have some ex- 
traordinary assistance of heaven and to be some- 
thing more than man.”” 

In other words, the theological is the irrational 
for Descartes ;* the infinite is beyond the intelli- 
gible —all of which is implicit agnosticism. He 
believes that he honors God by placing Him beyond 
the sphere of the rational and the intelligible. In 
like manner he reduces to a minimum the rational 
preparation of faith, and the value of the proofs of 
rational credibility, thus proving that philosophical 
rationalism tends to become a kind of religious 
fideism. It is a remarkable thing that Descartes 
continually speaks of the God of the philosophers, 
but never the God of Love. He speaks of the world, 
but is brief concerning creation and when he comes 
to the problem of man, his origin and destiny, he is 
silent.** ‘This juxtaposition of theology and phi- 
losophy is later on taken up by Spinoza who writes, 
“The end of philosophy is truth; faith is nothing 
but obedience and piety.” ” 

The Cogito of Descartes thus displaced the axis 
of philosophy. Levy-Bruhl writes: “'To the an- 
cients and to the scholastics (theology excepted), 


22 ¢ Discours,” rst part. 

23 « Principes,” I, XXVI. 

24 H. Gouhier, “ La Pensée Religieuse de Descartes,” 1924, p. 194. 
Jacques Maritain, “L’Esprit de la Philosophie Moderne,” Revue des 
Sciences Phil. et Theol., t. XXIV, 1914, p. 614. 

25 Tract., Theol. Pol. cap. XIV. 


140 +RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


the thinking mind appeared inseparable from the 
universe, regarded as the object of its thought, just 
as the soul itself was conceived to be the substantial 
form of the living body. According to Descartes, 
on the contrary, the existence of a thinking mind, 
far from being dependent on any other existing 
thing, is the essential condition of every other ex- 
istence conceivable to us: “ for if I am certain of the 
existence of anything but myself, with far better 
reason am I certain that I, who have that thought, 
am in existence. The only reality I cannot possibly 
question is that of my own thought.” * 


Evolution of the Cartesian Juxtaposition™ 


Descartes, in the application of his method, care- 
fully avoided the application of his method to 


26 « Modern Philosophy in France,” p. 20. 

27 A. C. McGiffert, “‘ The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas,” 1921. 

A. C. McGiffert, “ Protestant Thought before Kant,” 1915. 

Leckey, ‘‘ History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rational- 
ism in Europe,” 1865. 

Bernhard Piinjer, “‘ History of the Christian Philosophy of Relig- 
ion from the Reformation to Kant,” trans. from the German by Robert 
Flint, 1887. 

Robertson, “A Short History of Free Thought, Ancient and 
Modern,” 2d ed., 1906. 

Hunt, “ Religious Thought in England in the 17th Century,” 1870. 

Leslie Stephen, “ History of English Thought in the 18th Century,” 
1876. 

"Mark Pattison, ‘“‘ Essays and Reviews,” 1862, Tendencies of Relig- 
ious Thought in England, 1688-1750. 

Héffding, “‘ History of Modern Philosophy.” 

A. V. G. Allen, “ The Continuity of Christian Thought,” 1895. 

J. A. Dorner, “ History of Protestant Theology,” 1871. 

Otto Pfliederer, “The Development of Theology,” 1890. 

John Cairns, “ Unbelief in the 18th Century,” 1881. 

John Oman, “ The Problem of Faith and Freedom in the Last Two 
Centuries,” 1906. 


pee 
_- 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT I4I 


Faith, Morals, and Religion. But his successors 
were not of the same opinion. ‘The precaution he 
had taken to ‘ set apart’ the truths of faith was not 
equivalent to a treaty of peace with theology, defini- 
tive and accepted on both sides. It was merely a 
truce and destined soon to be broken.” ” 

The method of evidence and the ‘clear and dis- 
tinct’ became the method of Rationalism. ‘“ Ra- 
tionalism ultimately made its home in Protestant- 
ism rather than in the older communion, and not 
because the former was in principle more tolerant 
of divergent views, but because the divisions within 
the Protestant ranks made greater tolerance a 
necessity.” ” 

Two currents flow from Descartes: (1) The de- 
nial of the extrinsic which attaches itself to the 
intellectual side of the Cartesian juxtaposition and 
ends in a rationalized Christianity — a Christianity 
without the supernatural. (2) The assertion of the 
immanent which corresponds to the sensible side of 
the Cartesian juxtaposition and ends in an exalta- 
tion of the fact of the sensible or material universe 
as the limit and apex of human knowledge. We do 
not mean to assert that Descartes was directly 


J. Leland, “A View of the Principal Deistical Writers,” 5th ed., 
1837. 

F. Vigoroux, “Les Livres Saints et la Critique Rationaliste,” Vol. 
II, 1901. 

Ludovic Carrau, ‘‘ La Philosophie Religieuse en Angleterre,” 1888. 

Lechler, ‘‘ Geschichte des Englischen Deismus,”? 1841. 

28 Lucien Levy-Bruhl, “ Modern Philosophy in France,” 1899, 


p- 109. 
29 A.C. McGiffert, “‘ Protestant Thought before Kant,” p. 187. 


142. RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


responsible or even the principal inspiration of 
Philosophy and Theology which followed him, but 
merely this: Descartes, for the first time in modern 
thought clearly expressed a principle of Rationalism. 
Though his followers did not all adhere to it in 
principle, they did adhere to it in spirit. In this 
sense Descartes is taken as the prophet of the 
Philosophy of Fact. 

1. The Denial of the Extrinsic — Rationalism: 
The Cartesian method of the application of the prin- 
ciple of evidence to the sphere of knowledge broad- 
ened into the application of reason to all the 
departments of thought, both philosophical and 
theological. Just as Luther’s denial of grace in the 
realm of theology ended in the denial of super- 
natural power with the Socinians and the Armi- 
nians, so too, Descartes’ distortion of intellect in the 
sphere of philosophy, ends in the denial not only of 
supernatural power but also supernatural Jight, there 
being nothing more left to revealed religion than 
that which reason bestows on it or concedes to it. 

Revealed religion at first was denied only indi- 
rectly by the early Deists, whose rationalism was 
inspired by Protestant individualism as much as by 
Cartesian method. Herbert of Cherbury (1583- 
1648), for example, began with a rationalist prin- 
ciple that God’s perfection demands that salvation 
be open to all, and since this cannot be given in any 
particular system, which, by its nature, is not open 
to all, it follows that the means of salvation must be 
implanted in human reason whereby they will be 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 143 


accessible in all times, places, and circumstances. 
He then proceeded to draw out five propositions 
based on reason which constitute the norm of natu- 
ral religion. Thomas Browne (1605-1682) in his 
“Religio Medici” anticipates Harnack in the 
spurious distinction between the religion of primi- 
tive Christianity and the product of its adulteration 
through ecclesiasticism. Charles Blount (1654- 
1693) with unbecoming grace turns Genesis into 
ridicule and in his “‘ Oracles of Reason” adds two 
more propositions to the list of Cherbury, which 
constitute the essence of natural religion. John 
Locke (1632-1704), while admitting the possibility 
of human reason to prove the existence of God, 
nevertheless, in speaking of revelation sets up cer- 
tain caveats to guard us against the too easy accept- 
ance of pretended revelations.” “Whatever God 
has revealed is certainly true; but whether it be 
a divine revelation or not, reason must judge.” 
Locke, however, had wisdom enough to see that the 
Deists were illogical in setting up a catalogue of 
fundamentals. While the method of Locke was 
Christian, it was empirical in its results. ‘There 
is no doubt that Descartes exercised a profound 
influence on him. John Toland (1670-1722) ra- 
tionalized revelation in his “ Christianity not Mys- 
terious,” by denying there was anything above 
reason in it. Faith, for him, is merely a conviction 
based on previous knowledge and, therefore, reduci- 
ble to reason. In his “Letters” to Serena, the 


80 « Essays on Human Understanding,” Bk. 4, chap. 18, 10, 15. 


144 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Queen of Prussia, there was sufficient incredulity to 
attract the attention ‘of Baron d’ Holbach who trans- 
lated the “ Letters” into French to serve the cause 
of impiety in France. In this work Toland states 
that the doctrine of future life and the immortal- 
ity of the soul are “Egyptian fictions.” He wrote 
against Spinoza, but later became a pantheist, using 
the term for the first time in his “ Pantheisticon.” 
Finally, there may be mentioned among many 
others the Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), who 
declared in his introduction to “‘ Characteristics of 
Men, Manners, Opinions, Times,” that his object is 
to illustrate the Stoic Principle: everything is opin- 
ion. In the name of opinion he made war on 
Christianity and the Sacred Scripture, but at the 
same time asked tolerance for all, for we can never 
be sure when we possess the truth. 

The attack against Revelation and the super- 
natural became more effective when writers chose 
to attack its particular tenets. An important stage 
in the rise of rationalism is reached in Collins and 
Woolston who denied respectively the probative 
power of both prophecies and miracles. Anthony 
Collins (1676-1729), in his “ Essay Concerning the 
Use of Reason in Propositions, the Evidence 
Whereof Depends upon Human _ Testimony,” 
sought to undermine all evidence from prophecy, 
pointing out what he believed was a lack of corre- 
spondence between prophecy and fulfillment. 

Taking as his rule, after the Cartesian fashion, 
the proposition that the assent to any proposition 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 145 


depends upon the evidence with which it presents 
itself to the human mind, Collins deduces more 
geometrico, two propositions concerning Sacred 
Scripture: 


(a) Everything in Sacred Scripture which interpreted 
literally shocks our sense, should be interpreted allegorically. 

(b) All expressions which are not in accord with our 
manner of looking upon God should be rejected as interpo- 
lations. 


Collins, forgetting the distinction between what is 
above reason and what is contrary to reason, applied 
his principles and concluded that Sacred Scripture 
was not inspired. Thus he extinguished the one 
light the Socinians left burning. 

In 1713 he published his “ Discourse on Free 
Thinking Occasioned by the Rise and Growth of 
a Sect Called Freethinkers,” which is a panegyric 
on the license of thought. Men have fallen in a 
multitude of errors; there have been false revela- 
tions; hence the best attitude to take is that of 
atheism, for atheism is better than superstition. 
His argument was very much like saying that be- 
cause there is counterfeit money in the world there- 
fore there is no good money. 

Naturally these attacks in a Protestant country 
produced great commotion. Among those who rose 
up against him were Bentley, who published two 
volumes in 1713 under the title, “‘ Remarks upon the 
Discourses of Free Thinking.” Bentley treats Col- 
lins as a knave and a fool. Swift also attacked with 
that irony of which he possessed the secret. One 


146 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


of Swift’s main arguments is that of misanthropy. 
All men are fools, therefore freethinking is an 
absurdity. Freethinkers are knaves as well as 
fools, and hence their conclusions are contemptible. 
“The bulk of mankind is as well qualified for flying 
as for thinking.” ** A contemporary said: “If any 
man deserved to be denied the common benefits of 
air and water, it is the author of the discourse of 
freethinking.” Leslie Stephen says of him, “‘ He was 
destined like his great predecessor (Newton) to 
illustrate the truth that a man may be an eminent 
mathematician and a childish theologian.” ” 
Thomas Woolston (1669-1733) applied the al- 
legorical interpretation to miracles, after the fash- 
ion of Collins, and by the same token banished them 
from religion. In 1705, he published “The Old 
Apology for the Truth of the Christian Religion 
against the Jews and Gentiles Revived.” The Old 
Apology for him was the allegorical interpretation 
of Sacred Scripture. Why are there so many 
dissensions in the Christian body today? It is be- 
cause up to this time Sacred Scripture has been 
interpreted literally instead of allegorically. Moses 
was purely an allegorical person; miracles in the 
Pentateuch are merely types; the changing of water 
into wine is the symbolic destruction of the Jews in 
a bloody war under Titus. The plague of frogs 
over Egypt symbolizes the Jews dispersed over the 
world after the fall of Jerusalem. Collins never 


81 Swift, 1859 ed., Vol. 2, p. 19 
82 “ History of English rT hoaahes in the 18th Century,” Vol. 1, 
pe 218, 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 147 


attempted to prove that prophecies were absurd, 
but merely that prophecies did not refer to the nar- 
rative. Woolston, in asserting that Christ’s miracles 
were allegorical, was saying that actually they did 
mot occur. His style is bitter and acrimonious, 
violent and injurious. Leslie Stephen says of him: 
“He is a mere buffoon jingling his cap and bells in a 
sacred shrine, and his strange ribaldry is painful 
even to those for whom the supernatural glory of the 
temple has long utterly faded away.” * 

No one up to the present had attacked Revela- 
tion and Sacred Scripture in its entirety. Locke 
had proclaimed the autonomy of reason; Toland 
had substituted Pantheism, and Shaftesbury, skep- 
ticism for Christianity. Collins wrote against 
prophecies and Woolston against miracles, but it 
remained for Matthew Tindal (1657-1733) to at- 
tack the Holy City from all sides. Pope says of him 
in his Dunciad: “'Toland and Tindal, prompt at 
priests to jeer.” 

In 1730 Tindal published his best known work, 
“Christianity as Old as Creation, or the Gospel 
a Republication of the Religion of Nature.” ‘This 
work is the negation of the supernatural origin 
of the Bible as well as all Revelation. It can be 
summed up as follows: Natural religion is per- 
fect; all other religions, Christianity included, are 
true religions only in the sense that they are iden- 
tical with the natural religion. 

He believed that Our Divine Lord promulgated a 

SF Ops tit. MOL ap Pe 29 2s 


148 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


natural religion, and for that reason, he speaks 
in the title of his work of the “ Republication of 
the Law of Nature.” “The Bible is not inspired; 
it is full of contradictions, and the story of Adam 
and Eve is absurd.” Voltaire said of him that 
“he was the most intrepid supporter of natural 
religion.” * 

The rationalist onslaught against the super- 
natural was yet to be carried on by Thomas Morgan 
and Thomas Chubb who directed their attacks 
against the Old and the New Testament respec- 
tively. Four years after the death of Tindal, 
Morgan, his disciple, anonymously made war on the 
Old Testament, declaring that all revelation is the 
invention of theologians. It is interesting to com- 
- pare some of our “ new” ideas concerning God and 
Christ with those of Morgan. The modern idea, 
for example, of looking upon Jehovah as a local 
God of the Hebrews and an inferior kind of deity 
is to be traced to Thomas Morgan. He anticipated 
Eichhorn and Paulus in asserting that Old Testa- 
ment miracles were myths, and long before the 
Tubingen school set forth the Petrine and Pauline 
parties. 

Thomas Chubb (1679-1746) concentrated his 
attacks on the New Testament — rather an auda- 

84 In twenty years 106 refutations were written against him. The 
most important of all is “Scripture Vindicated,” written by Daniel 
Waterford, which contains a fine defense of the Divinity of Christ 
and the inspiration of Sacred Scripture. Another remarkable work 
was written by J. Foster, “ The Usefulness, Truth and Excellence of 


the Christian Revelation,” 1731, in which the author proves the 
authenticity, credibility and integrity of the New Testament. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 149 


cious task for one who knew only English. Vol- 
taire says of him, “He thought the religion of 
Jesus Christ was the religion of Thomas Chubb, but 
it was really the religion of Jesus Christ.” Dia- 
bolical possessions were explained as natural 
maladies; the Bible was no more inspired than the 
Koran; religion is a human creation and all relig- 
ions are equally true. 

With the supernatural eliminated, and all relig- 
ions reduced to a purely natural basis, it remained 
for David Hume (1711-1776) to inaugurate the 
idea of evolution in religion, so much a part of our 
modern history of religion. Polytheism was a 
primitive form of religion, according to Hume, and 
deism and theism are the fruits of the reflection of 
centuries. In his “ Essay on Miracles” he attacked 
the probative value of miracles, not disproving 
them, nor showing their impossibility as such, but 
only their impossibility of serving as a guarantee 
of the authority of a Divine Messenger. 

With Hume, deism dies and impiety takes its 
place. The English influence now penetrates into 
France and Germany. ‘Thus England pays back 
its debt to France, which had given it the rational- 
ism of Descartes. In France the reaction is one of 
impiety, in Germany it is one of theological ration- 
alism. Among the French may be mentioned Peter 
Bayle— the “ attorney general of scepticism,” the 
author of the “ Dictionary,” an arsenal for much of 
France’s rationalism; Bernard Fontenelle, who 
looked upon mathematics as the “‘ universal instru- 


150 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


ment,” and held the theory that the difference in 
peoples from one time to another is due to the 
necessary succession of discoveries, the theory that 
made Comte look upon him as the precursor of 
modern times; Voltaire, the scoffer whose whole life 
was dedicated to the destruction of Christianity, 
and who, in foolish pride, boasted that “it took 
twelve men to found that infamy (Christianity), 
but it will take only one to destroy it.” Voltaire, 
at the end of his life, speaking of the dissolution of 
Christianity, said: “‘] have done more in my time 
than Luther and Calvin.” Finally, there is Jean 
Jacques Rousseau, the apostle of sentiment and the 
exponent of romanticism.” 

In Germany, English Deism combined with 
French impiety and Wolffianism to produce its 
theological rationalism. Among the leaders may 
be mentioned Charles Wolff, who sought by the 
mathematical method to reduce theology and phil- 
osophy to a unit; Johann Salmon Semler, with his 
171 works, only one of which reached a second edi- 
tion; Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who introduced 
religious indifference in Germany with his theory of 
unlimited progress, and who published the “ Frag- 
ments of Wolfenbiittel ” as of an unknown author, 
when he knew them to have been the work of Reim- 
arus and the gift of his daughter Elsie. Finally, 
there is Frederick Nicolai, the German Diderot, in 
the sense that he began the publication of a Uni- 


85 The influence of Rousseau upon this whole movement is quite 
marked, but from another point of view. Cf. Leon Noel, “ La Philoso- 
phie Romantique,” Brussels, 1927. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT I51I 


versal Library wherein the Bible was explained ac- 
cording to reason. 

Thus the application of the principle of reason to 
revelation completed the work Luther had begun. 
For him, only the Church was “ extrinsic,” and was 
therefore to be denied. For his immediate follow- 
ers, and for the Socinians and the Arminians, su- 
pernatural power or grace is “extrinsic” and un- 
necessary, and now, thanks to the principle of the 
rationally clear and distinct, even the supernatural 
light — Sacred Scripture— has gone out. All re- 
vealed religion is gone now; reason has done its 
work. It remains for another philosopher to show 
that even reason is powerless. 


Il. The Assertion of the Immanent. The 
Philosophy of Fact. 


Another current flows from the sensible side of 
the Cartesian juxtaposition and ends in the asser- 
tion of the Philosophy of Fact. . 

In the “ Essay on the Human Understanding” 
Locke proposed to approach the discussion of phil- 
osophical problems from the basis of the analysis of 
ideas, a psychological method. He hoped to destroy 
false pretensions about knowledge by showing just 
how ideas originate. This was a very natural prob- 
lem in the light of Descartes’ answer to a similar 
question. He immediately begins by rejecting the 
innate ideas of Descartes. ‘‘ When men have found 
some general propositions that could not be doubted 
of as soon as understood, it was a short and very 


152 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


easy way to conclude them innate. This being 
once received, it eased the lazy from the pains of 
search, and stopped the inquiry of the doubtful 
concerning all that was once styled innate.” * 

Having disposed of innate ideas, and having 
proven that the mind, in the words of Aristotle, is 
nothing but a tabula rasa, he proceeds in his second 
book to show how ideas originate. 

For Locke, the whole content of consciousness 
springs partly from outer experience and partly 
from inner experience — sensation and reflection. 
By means of “ reflections we perceive our own men- 
tal states and activities; by means of sensation the 
effects of other things.” 

Locke then argues against substance, in denying 
that it 1s anything above the mere facts contained 
in experience. He writes, “The ideas of substance 


36 Bk. 1, Chap. 24. Locke argued against innate ideas in the 
following manner: “For I imagine anyone will easily grant that it 
would be impertinent to suppose the ideas of colors innate in a creature 
to whom God hath given sight, and a power to receive them by the 
eyes from external objects; and no less unreasonable would it be to 
attribute several truths to the impressions of nature and innate char- 
acters, when we may observe in ourselves faculties fit to attain as easy 
and certain knowledge of them, as if they were originally imprinted 
on the mind.” — Bk. 1, Chap. II, 1. ‘ Furthermore,” argues Locke, 
“it is evident that all children and idiots have not the least apprehen- 
sion or thought of them, but certainly they would have if they were 
innate.” The existence of polytheism and atheism proves that the 
idea of God, for example, is not innate in all men, and the diversity 
of moral customs in various countries proves that elementary truths of 
moral are not universally accepted. ‘ Whatever we think of innate 
principles, it may with as much probability be said that a man hath 11 
pounds sterling in his pocket, and yet denied that he hath either penny, 
shilling, crown or other coin out of which the sum is to be made up, 
as to think that certain propositions are innate, when the ideas about 
which they are can by no means be supposed to be so.” -— Bk. 1, 
Chap. IV, 19. 

7: Bk. 2, Chaps, 1, 34 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 153 


are such combinations of simple ideas as are taken 
to represent distinct particular things subsisting 
by themselves, in which the supposed or confused 
idea of substance, such as it is, is always the first 
and chief. Thus, if to substance be joined the 
simple idea of certain dull whitish color, with cer- 
tain degrees of weight, hardness, ductility, and 
fusibility, we have the idea of lead.” ** For Locke 
the idea of substance is the idea of the qualities or 
powers which we attribute toit. Everything which 
we attribute to substance is derived from experi- 
ence. Such a notion has within it the germ of the 
Philosophy of Fact which asserts that nothing is 
above experience in the strict sense of the term. 
Locke went so far as to say that even the idea of 
God which is a substance-concept is formed by ex- 
tending and elevating the ideas of spiritual qualities 
taken from the inner sense. 

For Hobbes, substances were only names; for 
Locke a substance is a sum of qualities. Berkeley 
here enters the philosophical world with his prin- 
ciple esse est percipi and concludes that there is 
nothing in the world independent of mind, or in 
other words, that the mind can never know ma- 
terial substances.” Berkeley retained spiritual 
substances; but his successor, David Hume, de- 
nied even these. “ The idea of substance is nothing 
but a collection of simple ideas that are united by 
the imagination, and have a particular name as- 
signed to them.*° 


Pek, 2, Chap, VII, 10, 89 “ Principles,” Sections 35, 36. 
40 “ Treatise on Human Nature,” Bk. 1, Part I, 6. 


154 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Now, it is important to observe here that of the 
three Cartesian substances, God, matter and mind, 
only one remains—the first. Berkeley prepared 
the way for a denial of material substances, and 
Hume laid the ground for the denial of spiritual 
ones. In addition to this, Hume even denied hu- 
man personality to be a substance, thus bringing 
man down to the realm of the material and the phe- 
nomenal.** It was typical of his whole philosophy; 
there are no substances, no rationes, no personal- 
ities: there are only facts. It is among them our 
mind must work, but never getting beyond them 
to a cause,” never transcending the material uni- 
verse, never knowing anything beyond factors dis- 
closed by experience. “My intention,” says 
Hume, “is only to make the reader sensible of the 
truth of my hypothesis, that all our reasonings 
concerning causes and effects are derived from 
nothing but custom; and that belief is more prop- 
erly an act of the sensitive rather than the cogni- 
tive part of our natures.” ** Belief is not destroyed 
but all its reasonable and demonstrable character 
is denied. God may exist, but the mind cannot rise 
above the fact; hence the ontological, cosmological 
and teleological arguments for God’s existence are 


41 Man is “ nothing but a bundle or collection of different percep- 
tions which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are 
in a perpetual flux and movement.” J[bid., Bk. 1, Part IV, 6. 

42 « After a frequent repetition, I find that upon the appearance 
of one of the objects, the mind is determined by custom to consider its 
usual attendant, and to consider it in a stronger light on account of its 
relation to the first object.” It is this impression, then, or determinism, 
which affords us the idea of necessity. Jbid., Bk. 1, Part III, 14. 

43 Jbid., Bk. 1, Part IV. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 155 


denied; we have no right to assume, he tells us, 
that there is a mind back of the universe, nor can 
we deduce an Infinite Creator from an imperfect 
world, nor a future state from the present moral 
order.” 

The first forward step in the emancipation of 
the modern mind was the privilege of private in- 
terpretation of Sacred Scriptures. ‘This immanence 
of authority, in the course of time, became the im- 
manence of mystical revelation and pietism. Phil- 
osophically, and with Descartes, immanence of 
justification without the authority of a Living 
Word, became immanence of knowledge without 
the determination of the sensible. Followers of 
Descartes enlarged on this principle and freed the 
mind even from the determination of causality, 
necessity and transcendence. Knowledge is im- 
manent in the fact, and there is no knowledge be- 
yond it. It was once the person to whom the 
supernatural was revealed and this is the Theology 
of Individualism; it is now the fact which contains 
knowledge, and this is the Philosophy of Fact. Is 
is any wonder that Hume, who marks the peak of 
such a philosophy, should say of his speculations: 
“they appear so strained and ridiculous, that | 
cannot find in my heart to enter into them any 
further.” *° 

44 A brief but clear exposition of these philosophers finds a sym- 


pathetic treatment in “ Philosophy,” Bertrand Russell, p. 244 ff. 
#9 “Treatise on Human Nature,” Bk. 1, Part IV, 7. 


CHAPTER VI 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 


NCE the idea of grace was distorted and 
twisted by making it extrinsic to nature, 
once the true function of the intellect as 

the crown and perfection of the sensible was denied 
in favor of innate ideas, there remained but one 
great spiritual reality untouched by the destroying 
hand of philosophers, and that was the will, which 
in traditional thought received its goal and end 
from the intellect. ‘There now appears on the 
scene one of the best known of the world philoso- 
phers, Immanuel Kant, who, endowed with every 
good intention, nevertheless razed to the ground the 
last vestige of traditional thought by distorting the 
true nature of the will, the source of man’s noblest 
aspiration. 

The origins of the Kantian system, first as far 
as external influences are concerned, and next as 
regards his own mental development, merit recall. 
Among many others, the two principal external in- 
fluences which went into the formation of his sys- 
tem were Pietism and Rationalism. Rationalism 
endangered his Pietistic leanings, and in an attempt 
to save the latter he worked out a system which 
was nothing short of revolutionary. 

156 


Pere rtLOSOPHY OF VALUE 157 


1. Rationalism. Kant announced in his “ Pro- 
logemena ” that it was the memory of David Hume 
that roused him from his dogmatic slumbers. 
Hume, it will be recalled, had limited philosophy to 
a knowledge of the fact, by denying necessity to 
ideas, the principle of causality, and the power of 
the mind to prove the existence of God. It was 
only by habit, said Hume, that we expect an effect 
to follow from a cause, but there is no reason for 
assuming the objective validity of the principle. 
Rationalism could sink no lower; it touched the 
nadir in the Philosophy of Fact. Thinkers were be- 
coming impatient of keeping their eyes on dust. 
Opposition to the Aufklarung * in Germany, was be- 
coming more formidable, and Wolff, who was using 
the rationalist method at Halle, found it more and 
more difficult to spread. Voltaire, in France, had — 
already scoffed at the rationalistic optimism of 
Leibnitz; Klopstock and Wenckelmann in Ger- 
many, shook men’s faith in rationalistic esthetics ; 
Lessing waged war on the canonical, the dogmas 
of zsthetics, poetry and theology.” Kant had 
sympathy for these forces which made war on 
Rationalism, and this because Hume’s principles 
in germ made for the dissolution of Pietism which 
was dear to his heart. In this sense Rationalism 
Was a negative influence on Kant. 

2. Pietism exerted both a direct and an indirect 
influence on Kant. (a) “His profound sense of 


1 Ed. Zeller, “ Geschichte der Deutschen Philosophie seit Leibnitz,” 
2nd ed., p. 69 ff. 
2 Friederic Paulsen, “Immanuel Kant,” 1902, pp. 18-21. 


158 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD > 


the urgency of the moral law written in our hearts; 
the individualism characteristic of his ethical out- 
look; his conviction that not gradual improvement 
but a complete change of orientation is involved in 
the passage from a bad to a good life; his apprecia- 
tion of the ‘radical evil’ in human nature, the 
corruption of the heart, which is none the less cer- 
tain that it defies satisfactory explanation; not to 
mention his obvious familiarity with the Bible; in 
all these features of his mind and character we 
trace the result of his religious education in Pietis- 
tic surroundings.” (b) “On the other hand, in 
his marked disposition to suspect those who in- 
dulge themselves in a supposed personal intercourse 
with God in prayer of a harmful and demor- 
alizing self-illusion we may not unreasonably con- 
jecture that we see the effects of a reaction from the 
atmosphere of overstrained absorption in private 
spiritual experience which the type of religion com- 
monly associated with the Pietistic movement 
would tend to create.” * 

Kant wished to save Pietism, and in particular 
the belief in God, immortality and freedom of the 
soul. The problem therefore was, on the one hand, 
to secure these beliefs, and on the other, to escape 
the skepticism of Hume. One escape would have 
been to take refuge in a Fideism of the supernat- 
ural order, but this did not appeal to him for he 
had no inclination to the supernatural for two rea- 
sons: his revulsion for Schwdrmerei, fanaticism 


3 C. C. Webb, “ Kant’s Philosophy of Religion,” 1926, p. 20. 
H. Schmid, ‘‘ Die Geschichte des Pietismus,” 1863. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE © 159 


and spiritual intoxication, and also his unhistorical 
temper of mind.* As time went on the solution of 
his problem became clear and certainly one of the 
influences which fitted in well with his Pietism was 
Rousseau’s assertion of the rights of feeling. 

“Up until now,” writes Hoffding, “faithful to 
the principles of Enlightenment, he had sought for 
the essence and nobility of man in the understand- 
ing only; now he discovered a still deeper founda- 
tion, common to learned and lay, in which the 
simplest peasant might be equal with the profound- 
est thinker. And Rousseau’s appeal to immediate 
feeling and immediate faith must have seemed all 
the more significant to Kant, since he was just on 
the point of undermining the proofs which had 
hitherto been supposed to support the assumptions 
on which the doctrine of natural religion was 
based.1° The day that Emile appeared, Kant, 
much to the astonishment of his neighbors, failed 
to take his usual walk at the accustomed hour. 

The problem for Kant was to save these beliefs 
which Hume destroyed by endowing them with 
some kind of necessity. If there was necessity in 
mathematics, why should there not be necessity 
in philosophy? Kant, in other words, sought to 
apply the certainty of Newtonian physics to the 
philosophical order. Crriticizing the Leibnitzian 
view he asserted that progress in mathematical 
knowledge was not given by an analysis of purely 
intellectual concepts, nor by the accumulation of 


5 “ History of Modern Philosophy,” Vol. 2, p. 34. 
S.C. Webb,op: citep. 21. 


Te te POPSET Wa Pe oo ea Ce fy Pes 
} r me as a Ae 4 
a Ch Fa ene eee oe Piaet, 


160 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


sense perceptions, which was the view of Locke 
and Hume, but by something midway between the 
two. He never doubted for a moment that there 
was an a priori element in mathematics and physics. 
To discredit them seemed foolish. Whence comes 
this necessity? ‘The first man who demonstrated 
the properties of an isosceles triangle, argued Kant, 
saw a new light; his thought was creative; it con- 
sisted in creating such a figure and then drawing 
out of it the necessary implications of his own 
thought. ‘ He saw that he had to produce (by con- 
struction) what he had himself, according to a 
prior. concepts placed into that figure and repre- 
sented in it, so that in order to know anything with 
a priori certainty, he must not attribute to that 
figure anything beyond what necessarily follows 
from what he has himself placed into it, in accord- 
ance with the concept.” In other words, unless we 
approach nature with certain principles we can 
never find its laws. ‘“‘ Even the science of physics 
entirely owes the beneficial revolution in its char- 
acter to the happy thought that we ought to seek 
in nature whatever reason must learn from nature, 
and could not know by itself, and that we must do 
this in accordance with what reason itself has placed 
in nature.” It was a happy thought, when Coper- 
nicus, contrary to common experience, assumed 
the spectator to be turning around and the stars to 
be at rest. He would never have discovered the 
law if he had not dared to seek it in the spectator 
instead of the spectacle. 


Tit PHILOSOPHY’ OF VALUE © 16x 


Professor Frank Thilly, in tracing out the ori- 
gin of the Kantian revolution, says: ‘“‘ Kant 
believed that a new light had flashed on him. Just 
as Copernicus imagines the spectator moving and 
the stars at rest, so Kant tries the experiment in 
metaphysics, of presupposing that, in the perceiv- 
ing of objects, it is the objects that conform to the 
perception, and not the perception that conforms 
to the objects. If experience is dependent on our 
minds, and something already organized by the 
mind, according to its laws, then we have an a 
priori knowledge of what we experience.” ° 

Kant thus reached the conclusion that mathe- 
matics is necessary and universal, because it is 
a creation of the mind, of the perceiving and the 
understanding mind. Applying the conclusion to 
philosophy, he said that we understand space, time 
and causal relation because the mind relates things 
spatially, temporally and causally —although if 
there is no objective relation between the two, it 
is difficult to see just how the mind should relate 
spatially rather than temporally, or causally rather 
than spatially. 

Such was the Kantian revolution. Up tothis time 
it was held that ideas adapt themselves to objects; 
for Kant objects adapt themselves to ideas. In the 
constitution of knowledge the mind contributes as 
much as it receives. The raw material of experience 
is taken up and moulded to a pattern contained 


8 Kant’s Copernican Revolution in “Immanuel Kant,” Open Court 
Pub. Co., p. 204 ff. 


162 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


within the mind itself. Time and space are no 
longer external to mind; they are “ forms of sensi- 
bility,” while the principle of causality and the 
categories of understanding are mental principles 
by whose agency our manifold experiences attain 
to their unity and coherence of knowledge. 

For Descartes, knowledge comes from the mind or 
from above in that sense that ideas are innate; for 
Hume, knowledge comes from senses or from below, 
in the sense that all ideas are groupings of sensa- 
tions. For Kant, knowledge comes from both above 
and below, both from the inside and the outside, and 
here he was close to the Scholastic position, but not 
close enough, for he failed to see a connection be- 
tween the inside and the outside. Senses cannot 
give knowledge, for they cannot explain necessity 
and universality; intellect alone cannot, for its 
forms areempty. It needs the matter of knowledge 
furnished by the senses and the forms furnished by 
reason. (For the Scholastics reason does not fur- 
nish forms, it finds them by abstraction; hence it 
bridges the gap between the inside and the outside. 
Intellect is a light, not a mould.) For Kant, the a 
priori which is in the mind furnishes its models to 
chaotic data of sense experience, and thus renders 
science possible. It is therefore reality which is 
modified by mind, and not vice versa. Kant thus 
bore the fruit of Descartes’ bad thinking. Des- 
cartes believed that the intellect attains immedi- 
ately and directly its thought, the Cogito, but not 
the reality. It was consequently very easy for Kant 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE _ 163 


to conclude that the reality behind these representa- 
tions must remain forever unknown. 

But up to this point we have been speaking of 
objects of experience. What about those objects 
which lie beyond experience, e.g. the existence of 
God, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom 
of the will? These, says Kant, cannot be the object 
of a priori knowledge in the same way as mathe. 
matics and physics, for the simple reason that they 
lie beyond experience. We can never know what lies 
beyond phenomena, or what exists prior to, or apart 
from being taken up by our mental powers. This 
brings up the subject of Kant’s attitude toward 
religion, and the revolution he introduced into phi- 
losophy of religion. 


Juxtaposition of Belief (Will) and the 
Reason of Belief (Intellect) 


Kant’s contribution to the evolution of the con- 
temporary idea of religion is the juxtaposition he 
introduced between the intellect and the will, or 
belief and its rational foundation. The will, ac- 
cording to traditional thought, receives its object 
from the intellect, for the evident reason that we can 
never will or love or believe in a thing unless we 
first know it. Kant, on the contrary, said we could 
never have any rational knowledge of natural relig- 
ious truths, and yet we were to believe in them for 
another reason than an intellectual one. To this ex- 
tent he tore down the bridge between intellect and 
will, between faith and science, between belief and 


164 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


its intellectual justification, and thus prepared fer 
the final exile of the last of the great spiritual reali- 
ties. For purposes of brevity we will indicate this 
juxtaposition in the two “ Critiques ” of Kant and 
in his “‘ Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason.” 
The “ Critiques ” were not the first of Kant’s works. 
As early as 1755, he wrote the “ General History and 
Theory of the Heavens,” which is important because 
it manifests the great impression the argument of 
design made upon him, for he confessed that the 
beauty and harmony of the universe made him sus- — 
pect a “‘strange hand” behind its orderliness. 
Eight years afterwards, he uses another argument 
for the existence of God in his work: “ The Only 
Possible Ground of Proof for a Demonstration of 
the Existence of God.” Herein he advances not the 
argument of design, but a modified form of the 
ontological argument; something is possible and 
possibility supposes a real being. The implication 
is that a thought which is not the thought of reality 
is no thought at all. The concluding words of his 
thesis, however, cast the shadow of the “ Critiques ” 
before them: “It is necessary that one should be 
convinced of God’s existence, but not so necessary 
that one should prove it.” A year later he published 
an essay on a question propounded by the Berlin 
Academy, “'The Clearness of the Principles of 
Natural Theology and Ethics,” which is important 
inasmuch as it anticipates a later distinction be- 
tween the speculative and the practical intellect, 
without using the term practical intellect, but rather 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 165 


“feeling” which he took from Hutcheson. The 
last important work before his “ Critiques ” was the 
Latin dissertation, “ De Mundi Sensibilis et Intel- 
ligibilis Forma et Principiis,” which is generally 
regarded as the transition work from dogmatism 
to criticism. This work does not yet make the 
denial that the human mind can know things as they 
are in themselves, apart from our perception of 
them, but it does speak of the senses and the forms 
of the understanding which figures so prominently 
in his later works. 

Itis clear that even these early works manifest the 
juxtaposition which was the thesis of his famous 
“ Critiques.” We are not interested in these works 
from the purely philosophical point of view but 
merely from their bearing on religion. From this 
angle the Kantian doctrine and the Kantian juxta- 
position of the intelligible and the credible may be 
enunciated as follows: “The Critique of Pure 
Reason” asserts that we have no rational founda- 
tion for our belief in God; the “ Critique of Practi- 
cal Reason” asserts that in spite of this it is 
necessary to believe in Him. 

In his “ Critique of Pure Reason,” Kant denies 
the validity of the arguments for the existence of 
God, arguments which are valid enough if one would 
admit his revolutionary relation between thought 
and reality. What is important is the conclusion 
he deduces from the impossibility of proving the 
existence of God, viz., the only theoretical use which 
can legitimately be made of the idea of God is the 


166 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


regulative. ‘‘ Reason does not supply us with the 
objective validity of such a concept.” ’ 

The idea of God does provide us with some notion 
of the systematic unity of all experience; the idea 
is important but whether or not there is an objec- 
tive reality standing behind it matters little. It 
still has some use.° ‘The supposition, therefore, 
which reason makes of a Supreme Being, as the 
highest cause, is relative only, devised for the sake 
of the systematical unity in the world of sense, and 
a mere Something in the idea, which we have no 
concept of what it may be by itself.” ® 

Kant even goes so far as to say that the term 
“Nature” might even be preferred to “God,” be- 
cause it suggests less knowledge of what that Being 
really is which lies behind phenomena. 

What is true of the existence of God, is true of the 
immortality of the soul and all religious truths — 
they cannot be rationally demonstrated; at best 
they can serve to unite our experiences in a nominal 
way, but only as ideas or hypotheses, and not as 
objective realities. 

In his next work, “The Critique of Practical 
Reason,” he attempts to bring through the back 
door those truths which he had ejected through the 


7 Mueller’s translation p. 542. 

8 “If we admit a Divine Being, we have not the slightest concep- 
tion either of the internal possibility of its supreme perfection, nor of 
the necessity of its existence, but are able at least thus to satisfy all 
other questions relating to contingent things, and give the most perfect 
satisfaction to reason with reference to that highest unity in its em- 
pirical application that has to be investigated, but not in reference to that 
hypothesis itself.” Jbid., p. 543. 

PoP. 345: 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE _ 167 


front door. His left hand knew not what his right 
hand did. He shows that, while God, freedom and 
immortality cannot be validated by pure reason, 
they are nevertheless demands of moral conscious- 
ness. Moral consciousness postulates a universe in 
which the value of the spiritual experiences are con- 
served and supported, 1.e., it must postulate a power 
adequate to bringing the Summum Bonum into be- 
ing. Practical reason is the name of human volition 
in the sense that it is supposed to give a reason for 
what is willed. 

After having said that it is morally necessary to 
admit the existence of God, he adds that this moral 
necessity is subjective, i.e., a need — Bediirfniss, 
and not objective, i.e., a duty — Pflicht, for “ it can- 
not be a duty to admit the existence of a thing, since 
that belongs wholly to the theoretical use of rea- 
son.” *° A few lines later he adds that the “ exist- 
ence of a supreme intelligence, for the pure reason 
is only a hypothesis, but from the practical point 
of view it is an act of faith, but an act of purely 
rational faith.” * 

The general result of the two Critiques of Kant, 
from the point of view of religion is the following: 
the foundation of religious certitude is not to be 
sought in the speculative reason, for it is incom- 
petent, but in the imperative needs of the practical 
reason. Friedrich Paulsen has well expressed the 
juxtaposition in these words: “ Kant’s Critique of 


10 Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft, 1 Theil, 2 Buch, ‘ Werke,” 
Berlin ed., 1908, p. 125. 
7 10id., Dp. 126. 


Ye 4 (as 7 wt She 
; eH ‘ok > a ee 
¥ e 1A ee ee 

ee Prt a ye 


168 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Pure Reason prepared the death-blow in asserting 
that reality transcends the standpoint of knowledge. 
From this as a consequence, religion cannot be de- 
rived from nor demonstrated by reason. Its roots 
are to be sought in the will.’ 

This is precisely what we mean by the juxtaposi- 
tion of belief and the reason for belief. Religious 
beliefs from this time on become something blind; 
they have no rational ground; they cannot be 
proved; they may be postulates of a rational faith, 
but we can never be certain that there are realities 
corresponding to them. Religious truths were 
transferred from the domain of knowledge to the 
domain of faith, and the problem of their validity 
became the problem of their value.” It is no wonder 
that Kant’s fellow-countryman, Heine, called the 
“Critique of Practical Reason” “the farce after 
the tragedy,” and held it as his opinion that Kant 
“‘ moved by pity for the poor people and perhaps by 
the fear of the police, added to the first Critique the 
second which is in contradiction with it, and which 
really should have borne over it the inscription 
Dante placed over the gates of hell: Lasciate ogni 
speranza, voi ch’entrate.” 

12 Immanuel Kant, 1902, pp. 18-21. 

13 “Ta Philosophie de la Religion de Immanuel Kant, p. 106. 
P. Charles, “ L’Agnosticisme Kantien,” Revue Neo-Scolastique, 1920, 
p. 257 ff. C. Sentroul, “‘La Philosophie Religieuse de Kant,” Rewue 
des Sciences. “Phil. et Theol.,” Jan. 1910, p. 49 ff. Phillip Bridel, 
“La Philosophie de la Religion de Immanuel Kant,” Lausanne, 1874, 
p. 106. Albert Schweitzer, “ Die Religions Philosophie Kant’s,” Frie- 
burg, 1899. Piinjer, “ Die Religionslehre Kant’s,” Jena, 1874. Colani, 


“Exposé Critique de la Philosophie de la Religion de Kant,” Stras- 
bourg, 1845. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE _ 169 


“ Religion within the limits of Pure Reason ” even 
better shows the philosophy of value carried to its 
logical conclusion. This work was made up of col- 
lected essays, one of which Kant wrote against 
Woltersdorf, pastor of the Trinity Church, Berlin, 
who was a member of the Board of Censorship 
appointed by Frederick II, whose function it was 
to test the doctrines of the instructors. ‘Two 
of the other essays were refused the Lutheran 
imprimatur so Kant appealed to his own university 
and the completed work appeared at Easter time, 
1794. 

What is important in this work is the application 
of the methods of the two Critiques. There is run- 
ning throughout it the thesis that although dogmas 
of religion have no objective validity (the point of 
view of the “ Critique of Pure Reason ”), they have 
nevertheless some practical value, or else some 
symbolic value (point of view of the “ Critique of 
Practical Reason”). This is illustrated first of all 
in his doctrine on the fall of man. He says that the 
fact of the fall of man, narrated in Genesis, explains 
very well man’s propensity toward evil, but he can- 
not accept that explanation, for every actual sin 
he believes is an original sin. Adam cannot be 
regarded as affecting us or implicating us in his 
rebellion against God. He is symbolic of “ Every 
Man ”; he stands for each of us. “ Mutato nomine, 
de te fabula narratur.”’ 

What is true of the Fall of Man is true of the 
Redemption. Kant is not definitely and concretely 


170 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


interested in whether or not Christ ever was an 
historical person; what is important is the sub- 
jective effect he has on the mind of the believer. 
This is what in recent years has been known as 
Modernism. “In a practical point of view,” he 
writes, “the supernatural hypothesis (that Christ 
is a preternaturally begotten being) can benefit us 
nothing since the archetype subjected by us in 
thought to this phenomena is to be found in our- 
selves.’** And asa further proof that the objective 
fact of Christ’s historicity interests him little he 
avows that the “practical value of the idea of the 
heavenly man alone possesses moral worth, and 
whosoever should ask for signs and credentials 
would thereby proclaim his own moral unbelief.” * 
Kant goes yet even further away from a rational 
ground for belief in Christ, by asserting that the 
emphasis on the miraculous origin of Christ might 
tend to lessen the force of His example: “‘the ad- 
vancement of this Holy One above the weakness 
of human nature, so far as we can see, would rather 
impede than assist this idea in exciting our generous 
emulation to attain it.” ** In accordance with these 
principles Kant regarded the Virgin Birth as an idle 
controversy, since the doctrine has no practical 
value except as a symbol of humanity free from 
anything which hinders victorious resistance to evil. 
In brief, Kant substituted for the historical Christ 


an archetype of humanity well pleasing to God. 


14 Die Religion Innerhalb der Grenzen der Blossen Vernunft, 
“ Werke,” Reimer ed., Vol. 6, p. 64. 
15 Tbid., p. 63. 1° Ibid. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 171 


This meant the end of an historical objective relig- 
ion and the beginning of the subjective.”’ 

His definition of religion as “‘the recognition of 
all our duties as divine commands ” was an excellent 
expression of his now already well developed relig- 
ion of values. But whence comes the persuasion 
that all our duties are divine commands? If it is 
purely subjective, as is the Kantian contention, then 
religion ends in skepticism, and for what reason 
should we appeal to God Whose existence we can 
never know? If itis objective, then God has spoken 
in history, then Christ is historical, then the boasted 
autonomy of reason is only a verbal autonomy. If 
it is interior as the Post-Kantian said, then it is 
God Who speaks to me and then the revelation can- 
not be limited to the practical and denied to the 
theoretical.** 

It is worth remarking with Professor Webb that 
Kant’s definition of religion (1) “ avoids requiring 
any speculative assertion, even that of the existence 
of God, and (2) avoids all suggestion of special du- 
ties (Hofdienste, court services, Kant calls them) 


17 “Tt may therefore perhaps be all very true that the Person of 
the Teacher of the alone true and universal valid religion is an im- 
penetrable mystery; that His advent and departure from earth were 
miraculous; that His eventful life and death were likewise miracles; 
nay, that the very history documentarily attesting the narratives of all 
these wonders is again itself a miracle (7.¢., supernatural revela- 
tion). ... All this, it is conceded may be done, so long as those 
historic documents are not perverted into elements of religion, and man- 
kind taught that the knowing, believing and professing their contents, 
is in itself something whereby we can render ourselves acceptable 
to God.” Ibid., p. 85. 

18 Otto Pfleiderer, “The Development of Theology,” trans. by 
J. F. Smith, 1923, p. 19; Gaston Rabeau, “ L’Introduction a l’Etude de 
la Theologie,” 1926, p. 51. 


172 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


due to God over and above our natural duties to our 
fellow men. . . Kant sees then in religion neither 
an enlargement of our speculative knowledge nor 
yet a collection of special duties towards God dis- 
tinct from those to our neightbor, but a peculiar way 
of regarding the latter.” * 

As Kant grew philosophically, it became increas- 
ingly more evident that he was bent on the denial of 
the transcendent and the assertion of the immanent. 
God and the intellectual justification of His exis- 
tence were denied as the transcendent, and the 
moral ego, the subjective self was asserted as the 
immanent. 

“‘ His conception of the Creator became more and 
more transcendent in the sense that the reference to 
him of the order of nature became something neither 
evident nor even capable of being inferred from 
phenomena, but a mere ‘regulative idea,’ indis- 
pensable perhaps, but with no claim to be taken for 
metaphysical truth, although negatively valuable as 
ruling out alternatives, which, in a region neces- 
sarily beyond the ken of our intelligence, would 
accord less with the facts within our ken. 

“On the other hand the God whose voice was 
heard by Kant in the Moral Law tended to become 
in his thought more and more immanent; for this 
God could not be conceived without injury to our 
moral outlook as accessible otherwise than through 
the moral law . . . only on condition of seeing in 
God no other than a Reason identical with our own, 


19 C, C. Webb, “ Kant’s Philosophy of Religion,” p. 151. 


i bath ~ in) 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 173 


as ours is with that of all rational beings, yet untram- 
meled by having associated with it a sensitive nature 
with its self-regarding appetites and peculiar point 
of view.” *° 

It may, at first sight, seem strange to say, that 
Kant eliminated the will, since his Practical Reason 
was nothing else than the will, and since he saved 
God and immortality and freedom through belief 
which is of the will. It is true that Kant did retain 
will, but he so much distorted it as to destroy its 
realnature. He believed that reason and faith could 
not exist together: “I had to remove knowledge to 
make room for faith.” ‘The will, which is the seat 
of inclination, in belief, is never blind according to 
traditional philosophy. The intellect supplies its 
object and the reason of its belief, for nothing is 
willed unless it is known. It will be recalled that, 
for St. Thomas, the will is nobler than the intellect 
in those cases where the object of the will is nobler 
thanthesoul. The reason is, that the intellect drags 
things down to its level, but the will always goes up 
to meet the requirements of its love. Thus it is 
nobler to love God than to know all created things, 
for in loving God the will goes out to meet God but 
in knowing things it descends to the finite and the 
material. But suppose now that the intellect cannot 
know God; suppose that it cannot rise above the 
the transitory things of the phenomenal world; sup- 
pose that it cannot prove the existence of God, or the 
immortality of the soul. What then becomes of the 


20 Jbid., p. 175. 


174 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


objects of the will? Where will it find those spiritual 
objects which will elevate it? Where will it find 
those realities, the love of which makes the will 
nobler than the intellect? What will supply it with 
goals and ends which will be something more than 
ideals like pots of gold at the end of a rainbow? 
Here is precisely the difficulty of Kant. Since the 


intellect cannot know anything above the phenom-- 


enal world, as he attempts to show in his “ Critique 
of Pure Reason,” then it can never offer to the will 
an object nobler than itself. If the intellect does 
offer such objects, it is for some other reason than a 
rational one, and then the will is blind. It strives 
without a reason for striving; it yearns without any 
certainty that the object of its yearning is a phantom 
or areality. When we have no reason for supposing 
there is a target before us there is not much reason 
for shooting at it, and if we have no real reason for 
the existence of God, then we have no reason for 
postulating Him for our moral life. Faith which 
has no rational ground is not faith but superstition 
and fancy. A will without an intellect making its 
postulates reasonable is not a will, but what Heine 
has called the “farce after the tragedy.” It is in this 
sense that Kant eliminated the will from the phi- 
losophy of religion by distorting it and making it 
blind. 

To this extent Kant introduced a new point of 
view, and in the words of Friedrich Paulsen it “ may 
be described by means of two propositions: first, 
the worth of man does not depend upon his intellect, 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE = 175 


but solely upon his will; and secondly, one’s ulti- 
mate metaphysics does not rest upon the under- 
standing, but primarily upon the will. The final 
and highest truths —the truths by which and for 
which a man lives and dies, do not rest upon scien- 
tific knowledge, but have their origin in the heart, 
in the essential principle of the will. . . .”* 


The Evolution of the Kantian Juxtaposition 


The influence of Kant on philosophy cannot be 
denied. Even in his own time it was felt that he 
would change the axis of thought. Boggesen called 
him a second Messias, and Stilling in a letter to 
Kant in 1789, said: “ You are a great, a very great 
instrument in the hands of God, and I do not flat- 
ter—pbut your philosophy will work far greater, 
far more general, and far more blessed Revolution 
than Luther’s reform.” Ho6lderlin, in the same 
laudatory terms, called Kant the “ Moses of our 
nation, who is leading it from Egyptian stagnation 
into the free lovely desert of his speculation and 
bringing to it the dynamic law from the holy 
mount.” 

The development of the Kantian juxtaposition 
of the intellect and the will, or the belief and the 
reason for the belief, was chiefly along two lines, one 
negative and taking its inspiration from the “ Cri- 
tique of Pure Reason,” the other positive and in- 
spired by the “ Critique of Practical Reason.” ‘The 
first was the denial of the transcendent, or the intel- 


21 “Immanuel Kant,” p. 391, 2- 


eh ee ea 
r 7 


176 | RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


lect as the foundation of belief; the second was the 
assertion of the immanent or the philosophy of 
values. 

The Denial of the Extrinsic: The intellect for the 
traditional philosophy was the faculty of the tran- 
scendent, the power which put us in communion 
with being, with truth and with goodness. What the 
philosophia perennis calls transcendent, that mod- 
ern philosophy calls extrinsic. The intellect is ex- 
trinsic for Kant; it cannot attain things as they are 
in themselves, nor reach up to a knowledge of God 
any more than grace, in the Lutheran conception, 
could intrinsically affect human nature. It can 
never give reasons for the faith of the will, nor for 
the postulates of the practical reason; and is the 
useless baggage in the journey toward the goal of 
religion. , 

The evolution of the Kantian opposition to intel- 
lect as the foundation of belief has been constant 
and unswerving. In a certain sense it has not 
evolved; rather it has become a fixed principle and 
a court of appeal. To it must be traced the present 
general belief that God’s existence cannot be proved 
by reason. ‘The favorite “argument” against the 
proofs for the existence of God is the “ argument 
of authority,” viz., “the fatal defects of all these 
have, it is almost universally conceded, been clearly 
expressed once for all by Kant.”* “The bare fact 
that all idealists since Kant felt entitled to scant 
or neglect them, shows that they are not solid 


22 James Ward, “ Pluralism and Theism,” 2nd ed., 1920, p. 406. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE = 177 


enough to serve as religious all sufficient founda- 
tion.” ** “ More to him than to anyone else,” says 
Professor W. R. Sorley, “this changed attitude to- 
ward the proofs must be traced.” * “Through the 
efforts of Kant,” says Professor Taylor, “ they 
have been discredited ** and have lost all their in- 
terest.” ° 

Modern philosophy is now so convinced of the 
uselessness of the proofs for God’s existence that it 
has ceased to give reasons for ignoring them. It is 
in possession of a fact and the validity of its claim 
does not seem to disturb its conscience. For this 
reason one looks in vain in theistic literature of 
the present day for a sound criticism of the proofs. 
“They have long since passed the critical stage in 
which critical minds find them convincing, and they 
are gradually approaching the stage in which men 
generally cease to find them interesting.” 

The Inaugural Address of Philosophy at the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh, in 1919, which summarized 
contemporary thought, bore witness to the general 
opinion of the impossibility of “‘ proving by dialecti- 
cal arguments the existence of God.” ** Professor 
Alexander, in his Gifford Lectures, asserted that 
“no one now is convinced by the traditional argu- 
ments of the existence of God.” ?? A member of the 


23 William James, “Varieties of Religious Experience,” p. 437. 
24 “ Moral Values and the Idea of God,” p. 299. 

25 A. E. Taylor, ‘* Elements of Metaphysics,” 9th ed., 1923, Pp. 400. 
26 W. R. Thomson, “ The Christian Idea of God,” p. 177. 

27 W. R. Sorley, “ Moral Values and the Idea of God,” p. 299. 

28 Norman K. Smith, p. 28. 

29 “Space, Time and Deity,” Vol. 2, p. 343. 


178 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Aristotelian Society has put them beyond hope: 
“We cannot hope,” he writes, “by intellectually 
seeking to find out God.”* The very word 
“proofs ” is written in quotation marks to indicate 
that a value has been attributed to them which they 
do not really possess.** No one is found “ so intel- 
lectually poor to do reverence to the ‘ proofs’ for the 
existence of God.” *” “To the modern mind these 
‘proofs’ when presented in their traditional garb, 
stalk about with the unsubstantiality of ghosts. 
‘They were mighty, but they vanished, 
Names are all they left behind them.’ ** 

It is worth observing here that the Catholic 
Church, which has so often been accused of being the 
mortal enemy of reason, practically stands alone 
today in insisting on the power of the reason to prove 
God. In this sense the Church is the champion of 
rationalism. The Council of the Vatican expressly 
formulated and defined a canon testifying to the 
power of reason to mount from the visible things of 
the world to the invisible God. And this definition 
gives food for thought. Our modern world boasts of 
its great progress, thanks to reason. Now, whether 


80 James Ward, “ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,” Vol. 
XX, 1920, p. 7. William James says they are “ absolutely hopeless.” 
Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 74, 171, 448, 455. 

31 W. R. Thomson, “ Christian Idea of God,” p. 6. 

32 Ibid. 

83 C, A. Beckwith, “ The Idea of God,” p. 111. Cf. R. Alfred 
Hoernle, “ Studies in Contemporary Metaphysics,” 2nd ed., 1921, p. 
302. Sir Henry Jones, “A Faith that Enquires,” 1922, p. 48. George 
Galloway, ‘“‘ Philosophy of Religion,” 1914, p. 381. Pfleiderer, “ The 
Philosophical Development of Religion,” Vol. 1, p. 137. A. N. White- 
head, “ Religion in the Making,” 1926, p. 71. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 179 


or not one accepts the truth of the Church’s teaching 
power, it will be admitted that her councils at vari- 
ous periods of history have laid bare the dominant 
errors of the time. She has her finger on the pulse 
of the world. Now if our world is progressing 
religiously, should not her councils in these latter 
days have defined intricate questions concerning 
the lofty and elevated problems of theology, such as 
the relation of Persons in the Trinity, or the Hypo- 
static Union? But the contrary is the fact. These 
were defined in the early ages, and the last general 
council had to define against an erring world that the 
human reason can prove God. Certainly, if there 
were real progress such an elementary truth should 
have been defined at the beginning instead of in our 
own day. Our thinking is in a bad plight, when we 
forget we have a reason! * 

The second evidence of Kantian influence has 
been the repudiation of dogmas, this being merely 
another form of opposition to the intellectual ele- 
ment in religion. Dogmas to our contemporaries 
are “‘tools.” “ Asin the case of all tools their value 


84 «Despite the frequent assertion that ours is the age of science, 
we are witnessing today a remarkably widespread decline of the pres- 
tige of the intellect and the reason. ‘Though the most successful of 
our modern sciences, the various branches of mathematics, physics, and 
experimental biology, have admittedly been built up by intellectual or 
rational methods, “ intellectualistic? and “ rationalistic” are popular 
terms of opprobrium. Even among professed philosophers, the high 
priests of the sanctuary of reason, faith in rational or demonstrative 
science is systematically being minimized in the interests of “ practical ” 
idealism, vitalism, humanism, or intentionism and other forms of 
avowed anti-intellectualism.” Morris R. Cohen, “The Insurgence 
against Reason, p. 113. Psychology and Scientific Methods, Journal of 
Philosophy, Vol. 22, 1925. 


180 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


resides not in themselves but in their capacity to 
work shown in the consequences of their use.” * 
The value of dogmas for the new-born religion 
resides not in their power to express an objective fact 
in definite terms, but in their power to influence 
the mind of the believer. Thus the Incarnation as 
a fact is not nearly so important as the subjective 
reaction it awakens, and consequently what is true 
for one worshipper is false for another. 

We leave it to Professor A. C. McGiffert, who is 
an authority on modern religion, to summarize 
Kantian influence on anti-dogmatism of our day. 
He writes: “ The criticism of Hume, and particu- 
larly of Kant, served to reveal the unsoundness of 
the old dogmatism, negative as well as positive. 
The supraphenomenal or noumenal world is quite 
inaccessible to the human understanding. This 
principle was employed by Kant to show the 
futility of all theoretical proofs of the divine 
existence, but he used it also to show with 
equal clearness that the existence of God could 


85 “Fear is the basis of religious dogmas.” John Dewey, “Re- 
construction in Philosophy,” 1921, p. 145. B. Russell, “ What I Be- 
lieve,” 1925, p. 19. E. Hershey Smith, “ Shall We Have a Creed? ” 
1925, pp. 24-34. ‘The world of thought, like the world of matter, 
is always moving, and rigid dogmas must be left behind. One might 
as easily stop the earth from revolving on its axis as tie the future 
down to a stated creed.” §. A. F. Rhys Davids, “Old Creeds and 
New Needs,” 1923, p. 178. ‘Creed is the petrification of opinion.” 
G. F. Wates, “The Religion of Wise Men,” 1923, p. 90. Kirsopp 
Lake, “The Religion of Yesterday and Tomorrow,” 1925, p. 106. 
S. Swisher, “ Religion and the New Psychology,” 1923, p. 161. C. A. 
Ellwood, “The Reconstruction of Religion,” 1922, pp. 121, 126. 
G. Santayana, ‘Scepticism and Animal Faith,” 1922, p. 10. E. S. 
Ames, “The New Orthodoxy,” 1925, p. 117. George Wobbermin, 
“ Wesen und Wahrheit des Christentums,” 1925. A. Loisy, “ L’Evan- — 
gile et PEglise, 1902, p. 66. ff. G. Tyrell, “ Through Scylla and 
Charybdis,” p. 306. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 181 


not be proven. ... The soundness of this posi- 
tion has been generally recognized since Kant’s 
day, and as a result agnosticism has widely 
taken the place of atheism. ‘The growth of the 
scientific spirit has tended in the same direc- 
tion to restrain thinking men from going beyond the 
facts and asserting what cannot be proved, whether 
it be by way of negation or of affirmation. Here 
and there is to be found dogmatism, both religious 
and anti-religious, as extreme and as intolerant 
as ever, but it is decidedly exceptional in culti- 
vated circles, and, as a rule, educated men vie 
with one another in the modesty with which 
they disclaim the right to make any positive asser- 
tions touching realities lying beyond the realm of 
phenomena.” * 


The Assertion of the Immanent. The 
Philosophy of Value. 


The positive contribution Kant made to con- 
temporary thinking far outweighs his destructive 
criticism. Kant was no mere iconoclast; if he 
rejected the intellectual foundation of belief it was 
to substitute another for it, the basis of the practical 
intellect. His followers have developed his thought 
in the same vein. Professor Sorley, for example, 
speaks of a Kantian substitute for the rejected intel- 
lectual system: “The theism of philosophical 
research in which the idea of God is arrived at by a 


36 A. C. McGiffert, “The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas,” pp. 
144, 145. Cf. C. E. Moore, “Christian Thought since Kant,” 1912, 


pp. 1-23. 


? > 2 Ls ee ae 
; e 1c; ee 
Ay he ae 


182 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


process of reflective thought must give way to the 
theism of religious consciousness for which God is 
in some way an immediate object.” * 

More definitely Kant’s thought has evolved along 
two distinct but not unrelated lines: (1) how we 
know, (2) what we know. The first of these cur- 
rents might be traced out according to the problem 
of knowledge, but that is not our present concern. 
Our interest is restricted to the religious problem, 
and here we find that the methods of knowing, 
inspired by the practical reason, are principally two: 
religious experience, and faith or hypotheses, both 
of which are non-rational. 

Schleiermacher was the first great follower of 
Kant to proclaim sentiment as the proper way to 
know God. The faculty or religion for him is a feel- 
ing or an immediate self-consciousness of God 
(Gefiuhl, unmittelbares Selbstbewusstsein) “'The 
feeling of the infinite in the finite ” is the basis of our 
beliefs. Religion is purely a matter of the heart, and 
so much so that the “ heart with its emotions with- 
draws into its own mystical depths, fearing any 
freezing contact with thought and purpose.” In his 
*‘ Second Discourse on Religion,” he says: “ There 
is no feeling which is not religious, save such as in- 
dicates an unhealthy condition of life.” Dr. Wob- 
bermin believes that Schleiermacher is the Coperni- 
cus of Theology, as Kant was the Copernicus of 
Philosophy, because he turned our attention from 


37 “ Moral Values and the Idea of God,” p. 302. S. Alexander, 
“ Space, Time and Deity,” Vol. II, p. 343. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE _ 183 


the rational interpretation of God to the senti- 
mental.** 

The theories of Schleiermacher were developed by 
the School of Erlagen (Hofmann, Franck) and the 
School of Ritschl (Fries and Wette). Herder’s 
theory of emotions, Feurbach’s doctrine of senti- 
ment, Hartmann’s philosophy of the unconscious- 
ness, were so many manifestations of an affective 
or non-rational approach to God, and so many ante- 
cedents of our contemporaries who have exalted 
religious experience as the proper way to know God. 
Among many others * we choose William James’ 
explanation of what is meant by religious experi- 
ence. He brings out its non-intellectual character 
by comparing it to a bar of iron which “ without any 
representative faculty whatever, might nevertheless 
be strongly endowed with an inner capacity for 
magnetic feeling; and as if through various arousals 
of its magnetism by magnets coming and going in 
its neighborhood, it might be consciously deter- 
mined to different attitudes and tendencies. Sucha 
bar of iron, could never give you an outward 
description of the agencies that had the power of 
stirring it so strongly, yet of their presence and of 
their significance for life, it would be intensely aware 
through every fibre of its being.” *° We know God, 


88 “Die Religions Psychologische Methode.” J. A. Leighton, 
“Typical Modern Conceptions of God,” p. 97. 

39 Otto, “Kantische Friesche Religionsphilosophie,? p. 111 ff. 
D. C. Mackintosh, “ Theology as an Empirical Science,” p. 91. D. W. 
Fawcett, “ Divine Imagining,” p. 155. William Kingsland, “ Our In- 
finite Life,” p. 189. 

40 “ Varieties of Religious Experience,” p. 55. 


184 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


therefore, but we do not know how we know; 
He is there, just as real as the thrust of a sword or 
an embrace. 

Another form into which the practical reason of 
Kant has developed is that of faith or hypothesis. 
Faith here means a “venture; it begins with the 
resolution to stand or fall by the noblest hypothe- 
sis.” ** In relation to God, it may mean as it does 


for Hans Vaihinger in his “ Philosophie des Als- 


Ob,” that we are to live as if God existed “ or it may 
mean as it does for Sir Henry Jones, a kind of 
experiment: “ If there are certain forms of religious 
faith, certain hypotheses, which deepen the meaning 
of natural facts, which amplify and extend the sug- 
gestiveness of the natural sciences, and, so far from 
traversing their findings, accept and invite them; 
and if in the world of human conduct they 
dignify human character, and reach sanity to man’s 
aims, construct and consolidate human society, 
elevate and secure the life of man and make 
for peace and mutual helpfulness amongst the na- 
tions. . . if, in a word, a form of religious faith or 
hypothesis works, in these ways, then indeed is the 
proof of its validity strong; stronger than the proof 
of any other hypothesis, because wider and 
deeper.” * 

These non-intellectual ways of knowing God, the 


41 Dean Inge, “‘ Proceedings of Aristotelian Society,” 1923, p. 180. 
42 Cf. Johannes Wegener, “ Die Christliche Religion als Religion 
des Als Ob,” 1923. H. Scholz, “‘ Annalen der Philosophie,” 3 Band, p. 2. 
43 «A Faith that Enquires,” p. 104. Richard Miller, “ Pers6n- 
lichkeit und Weltanschauung,” 1919. F. C. Schiller, “Problems of 
Belief.’ E. E. Thomas, “ The Non-Rational Character of Faith.” 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 185 


way of religious experience, and the way of faith, 
(we might also add Bergsonian intuition) are the 
heirs of the Practical Reason of Kant, and it was no 
exaggeration for Professor Farley to say during the 
Kantian centenary that, “In a certain sense, Kant 
could have a fellow-feeling with William James 
when he said: ‘On pragmatic principles, if the hy- 
pothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest 
sense of the word, it is true.’”’ ** 

We have called them examples of the immanent 
characteristic of contemporary religion and this for 
the reason that they appeal to nothing but the se/f, 
either as the subject of the experience or as the 
judge of the worth of the hypothesis. The tradi- 
tional procedure, did not begin with self, but with 
the world; the fulcrum of its proofs was in the open 
air and reposed on the evident characteristics of the 
universe which revealed God, though imperfectly, 
as the painting reveals its artist. 

Another, and yet more important aspect of the 
Kantian philosophy of the immanent is in answer 
to the problem what do we know. It will be recalled 
that for the Kantian speculative reason God is 
neither being nor object, but an ideal, in the sense 
that He represents the supreme unity of a synthetic 
mind. Whether or not an object corresponds to this 
ideal does not matter. For the Kantian practical 
reason God is a necessary postulate, not to establish 
the bond between will and duty, but to assure the 


44 J. H. Farley, Kant’s Philosophy of Religion, in “Immanuel 
Kant,” Open Court Pub. Co., 1925, p. 134. 


186 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


future coincidence of duty and happiness. Schleier- 
macher pushed the Kantian practical reason to its 
natural conclusion — symbolism, by asserting that 
sentimental theodicy expresses only the needs of the 
heart and subjective dispositions. Since we cannot 
know God as He is in Himself, but only in relation 
to the needs of our practical reason, then we have 
“knowledge only of the being of God in us, but not 
the being of God external to the world or in Him- 
self.” Schleiermacher’s doctrine then became not 
an account of what God is in Himself, but what we 
found Him to be in our religious life,*° — a doctrine 
which Emerson introduced into America, in his 
Harvard Divinity School Address of 1838. 
Feuerbach went further than Schleiermacher and 
said God was the name of the sentiment, and far 
from being our Creator is our work — ens affectus. 
Ritschl, aided by Kant and Lotze, then intro- 
duced a distinction between the world of ideals and 
the world of facts. Beginning with sense experi- 
enced he argued that the mind appropriates sensa- 
tions in a two-fold way. (1) Sensations produce 
feelings of pleasure or pain and so become deter- 


45 “ By means of feeling applied first to himself, man finds God, 
for it is in ourselves that we discover the sense of the whole and then 
transfer it to Nature round about us, Just as man unifies nature, so he 
gives a soul to nature, and finds in it that which corresponds to him- 
self. It is in others we find ourselves—. Then comes the famous 
Freudian passage: ‘“ Wherefore humanity and religion are closely and 
indissolubly united. A longing for love, ever satisfied and ever again 
renewed, forthwith becomes religion. Each man embraces most warmly 
the person in whom the world mirrors itself for him most clearly and 
purely; he loves most tenderly the person whom he believes combines 
all he lacks of complete manhood. Similarly the pious feelings are 
most holy that express for him existence, in the whole of humanity, 
whether as blessedness in attaining or of need in coming short of it.” 
“Reden,” (p, 92. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE _ 187 


mined according to their Value for the Ego. (2) 
On the other hand sensations embodied in ideas are 
judged in respect to their cause and their connection 
with other causes. ‘These two functions make up 
Value-Judgments and Causal-Judgments. Ritschl 
introduces Value-Judgments as an aid in deter- 
mining the difference between religious and theo- 
retical knowledge. “Religion and_ theoretical 
knowledge are different functions of the spirit, 
which, when they deal with the same objects are not 
even partially coincident but are divergent through- 
out.” * “Tn his hands,” says Dr. George Galloway, 
“the distinction became an instrument which en- 
abled the theologian to dispense with metaphysics 
and to build up a system of Christian doctrine 
which claims to be the reflection of the practical 
demands of the Christian conscience.” * 

It is not a long step from such doctrines, or even 
from the practical reason, to our modern pragma- 
tism which attempts to prove that all proofs are 
worthless, and to assert that the truth of a proposi- 
tion depends upon its value or utility. Once a 
philosopher denies the objective validity of any be- 
lief, it will not be long until its value will be the 
primary and unique consideration. And this was 
the revolution Kant effected; driving the rational 
element out of religion, he paved the way for what 
has become the dominant philosophy of our day 
— the philosophy of value. “Though he himself 
does not say it in so many words, we can see that 


46 « Justification and Reconciliation,” pp. 193, 194. 
47 “ Religion and Modern Thought,” 1922, p. 78. 


188 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Kant used the idea of value to express the idea of 


God. ... Implicitly, at all events, Kant made the 
fertile suggestion that the moral consciousness 
could give a valid content to the idea of God which 
the speculative intellect could not supply. ... In 
making what amounted to a refusal to fuse into one 
the problems of existence and value, he opened up 
a line of thought which has been widely followed 
by a later day.” ** The transition was an easy one 
from God as a postulate of moral consciousness to 
God as a value for me. 

Kant gave philosophy another ideal and philoso- 
phers another goal, besides that of truth and love 
of truth. If the mind could never get beyond the 
phenomena and the factors of experience, then it 
was useless to speak of religious truth. A new in- 
terest displaced it, one which brought man into 
greater prominence, and even made God evolve 
about him as his theory of knowledge made the 
universe revolve about mind, and this new interest 
was value. It was the logical outcome of a philoso- 
phy which divorced belief and the reason for be- 
lief, and left the will no greater security than a pos- 
tulate; a philosophy which has so often proved its 
own futility, for out of a thousand that would fol- 
low Kant in his rejection of a rational ground for 
the existence of God, only a few would follow him 
in accepting God as a postulate. More and more 


48 George Galloway, “Religion and Modern Thought,” 1922, p. 
78. ‘The world of values remained in all his thinking the supreme 
realm of life, and devotion to it was man’s chief end and glory.” E, 
S. Ames, Religion of Immanuel Kant, in “Immanuel Kant,” Open 
Court Pub. Co., 1925, p. 93. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE _ 189 


philosophers tended toward an immanence, and by 
a gradual declension in logical consistency, the im- 
manence at first which was only the immanence of 
religious experience as the source of knowledge 
of God (how we know) degenerated into the imma- 
nence of God in the universe in German Panthe- 
ism, then the immanence of God as identical with 
the feeling or experience of God, and finally the 
immanence of value by which each man judged for 
himself the reality of God by the value God had for 
him. This is the contemporary idea of religion. 


Conclusion 


The three great spiritual realities of religion, 
grace, intellect and will, by which we are made to 
“the image and likeness of God,” have in the course 
of the last four centuries been completely banished 
from religion, principally through distortions of 
their nature wrought by the three prophets of mod- 
ern religion, Luther, Descartes and Kant. Each 
of them shifted discussion from man to his psychic 
state, and from the total drama of all reality to the 
individual subject of experience.*” Each of them 
made war upon the transcendent as if it were the 
extrinsic, and considered as an intermediary or a 
barrier everything which traditional philosophy 
looked upon as a perfection. Luther distorted 
grace by making it extrinsic to human nature and 
a mere imputation, and thus prepared for its final 
elimination; Descartes distorted the intellect by 

#9 A. N. Whitehead, “Science and the Modern World,” p. 201. 


190 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD > 


making it independent of the sensible world, and 
thus prepared for its degeneration into Rational- 
ism; Kant distorted the will by making it blind in 
separating it from the intellect and thus under- 
mined its worth and prepared the way for senti- 
mentalism. 

The denial of the transcendental realities under 
the guise of their being “ extrinsic” has been com- 
plemented by the assertion of other and immanent 
principles, all of which have made for the deifica- 
tion of man and the humanization of God. Luther 
asserted the immanence of individual interpreta- 
tion of Sacred Scriptures which degenerated to a 
mystical and spiritual individualism in which each 
believer felt himself the object of Divine Revela- 


tions or communications: The Philosophy of Indi- Ss 


vidualism. Descartes asserted the immanence of 
philosophical “private interpretation” viz., the 
individualism of the Cogito and the clear and dis- 
tinct, which ultimately degenerated into a Ration- 
alism denying material and spiritual substances 
and the existence of anything beyond experience: 
The Philosophy of Fact. Kant asserted the imma- 
nence of the moral law, the independence of belief 
in relation to a foundation for a belief, which in his 
followers developed into a pantheistic and psycho- 
logical immanence of God in the world and in self, 
and the judgment of these realities not according 
to their objective truth, but according to their 
pragmatic value for the individual believer: The 
Philosophy of Value.” 


50 « The general development of the Modern World shows a ten- 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE - 1o1 


Add to this subjectivism, this empiricism, and 
this pragmatism, a pinch of biology, psychology, 
and new physics, stir it up, bake in a pan well 
greased with evolution, and the finished product 
will be the modern God. Some call it “Space- 
Time” (Alexander), others ‘‘ The Harmony 
Among Epochal Occasions ” (Whitehead), others 
the “‘ Perfect Process ” (Jones), others an ‘‘ Ima- 
ginal,” (Fawcett), others “Society Divinized ” 
(Durkheim), others a “ Projected libido ” (Moxon) 
but for those who believe that there are a thousand 
angles at which a philosopher may fall, and only 
one at which he may stand, for those who hold 
fast to truth rather than novelty, such gods are 
mere travesties, and such philosophers, sincere 
though they be, are hastening the advent of a new 
paganism and a new panic, for the day that God 
passes out of civilization, that day gladiators step 
in. 
dency towards immanence.... The religious conviction of the Middle 
Ages regarded the other world as the true fatherland, and only in its 
relation to the other world did this world acquire value; the Modern 
World, on the other hand, began with the desire to seek the operation of 
the Divine more within this world. This resulted in the first place, 
in a pantheism as professed by the noblest spirits of Renaissance... . 
Pantheism proved overwhelmingly attractive to the German Classical 
Period, since it promised to bridge every antithesis and in particular to 
combine the broadest and freest treatment of the visible world with the 
open recognition of an invisible one. . . . At first the divine is brought 
near to our existence, then it is closely associated with it as an inspiring 
force, and finally it totally disappears or vanishes to an unapproachable 
distance. ‘Thus religion, which was once an omnipotent power, has 
become, for the modern man, a thing of quite secondary importance, 
nay, a mere illusion, and the world of immediate experience has more 


and more completely absorbed his whole thought and feeling.” Rudolf 
Eucken; “ Main Currents of Modern Thought,” p. 464. 


PART III 


Critical Appreciation of the Con- 
temporary Idea of Religion in 
the Light of the Philosophy 
of St. Thomas Aquinas. 


i 


ow 


PART III 


Critical Appreciation of the Con- 
temporary Idea of Religion in 
the Light of the Philosophy 
of St. Thomas Aquinas 


CHAPTER VII 


THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 


siderations we come into more intimate 
contact with the modern idea of religion. 
But before proceeding to the details a few general 
remarks concerning philosophy of religion may not 
be out of place. 
1. Contemporary thinking is noteworthy for an 
a priori denial of the supernatural which 1s wholly 
unjustified. Man has no right to assert there is no 
order above him any more than the rose would 
have the right to assert, if it could assert, that there 
is no life above it. The supernatural is not destruc- 
tive of the natural, but its perfection. One of the 
things which will always be difficult to understand 
is why some thinkers will believe in a blind urge 
pushing man on to greater and greater perfection 
even unto the state of deity, and yet deny the super- 
natural, which is such an added perfection with 
195 


Pp ASSING from historical to philosophical con- 


196 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


this difference; viz., that in the first case the push 
is from below and implies the greater comes from 
the less, while in the latter it is a gift from above 
and implies that the infinite can give without ex- 
haustion, as the ocean can send up its vapors with- 
out ever diminishing its vast content. If a plant 
can “ supernaturalize,” in the broadest sense of the 
term, the oxygen which it takes into its system and 
render it part of itself, make it live under new govy- 
ernment, and be directed by new laws even to the 
extent of being organic with life itself; if the plant 
can be “supernaturalized” when taken into the 
animal, even to the extent of being one with it, so 
that it sees, and feels and hears because one with 
the animal, why should not man be capable of be- 
ing supernaturalized by some power above him by 
which he becomes endowed with powers, natures 
and exigencies far surpassing his own nature and 
yet retaining his own personality? Biology, in 
leaving room for a higher kingdom, leaves room 
for supernaturalization. ‘Supernatural biology ” 
leaves room for supernaturalization, thanks to the 
Kingdom of God, and to deny there is a power above 
man capable of elevating and ennobling him is to 
assert that man has Life within himself; it is 
completely to shut one’s eyes to the truth that the 
very fact that man must nourish himself in order 
to live testifies to his dependence on some other 
kind of life. 

2. There is a confusion of de facto and de jure, 
concerning the whole nature of religion. It is one 


; de 
rea sn 
>» T Ge A: 


THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 197 


thing to say that the mind cannot prove the exist- 
ence of God and another thing to say the mind has 
a right, based on evidence, to make such an asser- 
tion. Kant has said that the proofs for the exist- 
ence of God are worthless and from his day on 
philosophers have accepted his word as final. No 
less a philosopher than James Ward has said, “ ‘The 
fatal defects of all these (traditional arguments) 
have, it is almost universally conceded, been clearly 
expressed once for all by Kant.”* 

It is quite true that Kant did assert and did give 
some reasons for the invalidity of the proofs for 
the existence of God, but it is quite another problem 
whether or not a philosopher who effects a Coper- 
nican revolution in thought and who makes mind 
the measure of reality instead of reality the measure 
of mind, is entitled to pass judgment on proofs. 
Kant’s criticism of the proofs are valid enough pro- 
vided you admit his premise that the mind can 
never know the nature of things. Sometimes that 
which most needs a criticism is a critique. It is 
not our point here to show the fallacy of the Kantian 
argument; that has been well done by others ’* but 
merely to observe that there is, in modern thought, 
a too general readiness to accept anything which 
criticises the traditional, and too great an unwill- 
ingness to judge the value of the criticism. The 
general rejection of the proofs for the existence of 


1 “The bare fact that all idealists since Kant felt entitled to scant 
or neglect them shows they are not solid enough to serve as religion’s 
all sufficient foundation.” ‘“ Pluralism and Theism,” 2nd ed., 1920, p. 
406. W.R. Sorley, “ Moral Values and the Idea of God,” p. 299. 

2 Garrigou-Lagrange, “ Dieu, Son Existence et Sa Nature.” 


1988 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


God does not prove they are worthless, but merely 
that philosophers are willing to accept uncritically 
a criticism of them. 

Apart from these considerations it may be said 
that there are three fallacies underlying the relation 
between God and man, as this relation is conceived 
by our contemporaries. These fallacies are: 

I. The Fallacy of Nominalism. 


II. The Fallacy of the Uniform Method of Science 
III. The Fallacy of Inverted Relations. 


Nominalism is one of the dominant character- 
istics of modern thought and one responsible in 
large for the volatile notion of God and religion. 
Nominalism is opposed to realism in so far as intel- 
lectual knowledge is concerned. Realism believes 
that the mind is in contact with the real, and that 
the judgments and conclusions reached by the mind 
are primarily judgments of the objective world. 
Nominalism, on the contrary, denies this. In its 
philosophical form, the nominalism which has in- 
spired the new idea of religion, may be summed up 
in the following propositions. 

(a) The mind can never know anything beyond experi- 
ence. 

(b) The mind can never know the nature of reality, hence 
the subject, being enclosed within himself, must seek within 


himself, in the confines of his own conscience and heart, all 
the knowledge which he needs and all the beliefs he can use. 


Against these tenets of Nominalism Thomism 
asserts their contraries. 
1. The mind can know things beyond experience. 


THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM = igg 


Professor Whitehead was stating a tenet of Nom- 
inalism when he denied the power of the mind to 
know a transcendent God. “ Any proof,” he writes, 
“which commences with the consideration of the 
character of the actual world cannot rise above 
the actuality of this world. It can only discover all 
the factors disclosed in the world of experience.” ® 

This statement of the celebrated physicist- 
philosopher rather proves the contrary of what he 
intended. In laying down the limits of knowledge 
he is really asserting the power of mind. That any- 
one can make such a demonstration is the refuta- 
tion of what he demonstrates. To say we cannot 
know anything beyond the factors of experience is 
to say that we know what has already been called 
unknowable; to call an island a “‘ lost island ” means 
that at one time it must have been found. 

Apart from this observation, the assertion of the 
philosopher would be perfectly valid provided the 
material universe was the total cause of all knowl- 
edge, for then we never could get beyond the 
“factors disclosed in the world as experienced.” 
But such is not really the case. The sensible data 
and the empirical grouping of these data is not the 
whole cause of knowledge.* If there is a power 
above matter, which is not material and which is 
capable of working on matter, then certainly such 


3 “Religion in the Making,” p. 71. 

4 Non potest dici, quod sensibilis cognitio sit totalis et perfecta causa 
intellectualis cognitionis, sed magis quodammodo est materia cause. 
I. q. 84 art. 6 . . . sensitiva cognitio non est tota causa intellectualis 
cognitionis. Et ideo non est mirum si intellectualis cognitio ultra 
sensitiva se extendit. Jbid., ad 3, 


200 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


a power is capable of producing a knowledge 
superior to the empirical grouping of the facts, just 


as marble is capable of becoming a statue of Moses 


given the spiritual artistry of Angelo. 

The factors of experience furnish the “ raw mate- 
rial”; the intellect, too, furnishes something and 
that is its abstractive power which is capable of re- 
vealing the intelligible in things. The abstracting 
intellect might very inadequately be compared to 
an X-Ray, which discloses the inner constitution of 
a thing which is denied to mere sense vision. Ab- 
straction, however, does not mean the peeling off 
of individuating notes as we might peel an onion. 
It does not mean a “rough and ready method of 
suppressing what appears to be irrelevant details,” 
as Professor Whitehead would have us believe.” 
The suppression of individuating notes and details 
in abstraction is simply a by-product of the work of 
the intellect and not a primitive process at all. The 
nature of a thing is not a core about which are 
grouped accidents and qualities ; neither is it a skele- 
ton. The intellect working on the factors of experi- 
ence reveals the nature of these factors, or their 
explanation in terms of the intellect; it reveals 
their ratio, or even better, it reveals the bead a2 
of empirical phenomena. 

All science would be impossible were there not 
some power to rise above the “ factors of experi- 
ence.” The very law of the factors, their finality, 
their relationship— none of these is disclosed by 

5 “ Science and the Modern World,” p. 77. 


ee 
oe 

ars i” 
» > ee oe 


THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 201 


the factors as such. Nothing else than an intellect 
can perceive them, for nothing else than an intellect 
can perceive relation between facts; that is why 
man is the only being in the universe that can laugh. 
He has the faculty of seeing relations and deducing 
from suggestions. ‘There is nothing in this world 
quite so boring as an ambitiously funny story the 
point of which is disclosed too soon in the telling. 
Equally true there is no philosophy quite so pessi- 
mistic as a nominalism whose conclusions are on 
the same level with its empirical premises. The 
inability to transcend the factors of experience is 
the foundation of all pessimism; it is a philosophy 
with its eyes on the ground like a mole, not on the 
heavens like an eagle. 

But how does the intellect rise above this world? 
Even though it be granted that the intellect can 
know the nature of things, does it still follow that 
it can know beings which do not directly and im- 
mediately fall under its experience? ‘The position 
of St. Thomas and the whole tradition of common 
sense is that the intellect can know beings which do 
not fall under the senses, and that it can even know 
God. A parenthesis of Thomistic metaphysics here 
becomes necessary. 

Every faculty, according to St. Thomas, has an 
object to which it is ordained by nature. In the 
order of generation a very definite color is the ob- 
ject of vision, and a definite sound the object of 
hearing. But in the order of the formal object the 
object of vision is not a particular color, green for 


202 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


example, but all colors. The ratio under which 
vision seizes its object is color, and the ratio under 
which hearing grasps its object is sound, for un- 
less a thing is sound it can never be heard. 

But the intellectual knowledge is of a superior 
kind to sensible knowledge. Consequently, it must 
have its own proper and superior object. There 
must be some ratio under which all knowledge is 
grasped, just as there is a common ratio under 
which the eye sees its object. 

What is the common ratio of the intellect? It is 
Being in all its latitude. This is its formal object. 
“That which is first apprehended is being, the 
knowledge of which is included in all things that 
the intellect apprehends.” “ Without being there 
can be no knowledge.” “It is that which the mind 
first conceives as most known, and it is that into 
which all its other conceptions are resolved.” ° 

But if being is the common ratio under which 
everything is known, it would seem that the object 
of the intellect is only being which 1s common to 
the nature of material things. How can we know a 
being which is beyond that which is common to all 
sensible experience? How can we know God? Can 
His Being be embraced under such a restricted ob- 
ject, namely, the being common to material things? 
It would seem that Professor Whitehead’s conten- 
tion is justified; namely, that we can know nothing 
except what is disclosed by the facts as experienced 
and can never know anything beyond these facts. 


6 1-2 q. 94 art. 2; 3. q. 10 art. 3; De Veritate, q. 1 art. 1. 


THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 203 


The answer of St. Thomas to this difficulty is as 
follows: Every faculty has a double object: a mo- 
tivating object and a terminating object. ‘This is 
true of the sense as well as the intellect. The mo- 
tivating object of the eye, for example, is the red 
house. The terminating object of the eye is color. 
In the intellectual order the motivating object is 
the nature of material things, or the “factors dis- 
closed in the actual world as experienced.’”’ Quite 
naturally the motivating or the proportionate ob- 
ject of the intellect will be greater than that of the 
senses for the reason that the sensible is not the 
total cause of the intellectual knowledge but only 
the matter of the cause.* 

Let it be noted that the motivating object never 
adequates the capacity of a faculty. Green does 
not exhaust the potentialities of vision, for the eye 
can see other colors besides green. So neither does 
the essence of material things exhaust the poten- 
tialities of the human intellect. ‘The terminating 
object far surpasses its motivating object, for un- 
der the former consideration its object is being in 
all its latitude. 

But why is not the intellect adequated by the 
being which is common to material things? Why is 
not its object the intelligible being of the material 
universe instead of being in all its latitude? Here 
it is necessary to recall the basic principle of the 

7 1. q. 17 art. 3; De Veritate, q. 1 art. 12; C. G. lib. 3 cap. 56, The 
motivating object has also been called the proportionate object. John 


of St. Thomas, Phil. Naturalis, t. 3. p. 3. q. 10 art. 3. 
Bre. de 84 art. 6. 


204, RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Thomistic theory of knowledge, namely the greater 
the spirituality of a thing, the greater is its power 
for knowing. Knowability increases with separa- 
bility from matter. Knowledge increases with 
separation from matter.® But the intellect is a 
spiritual faculty. Being spiritual it can be actu- 
ated spiritually, and the more spiritual the object 
the more adequate it is for the intellect, and the less 


spiritual it is the less adequate. The only adequate — 


object of the human intellect then must be being in 
all its latitude.” Due proportion being guarded 
the human intellect shares the same adequate ob- 
ject as the angelic and the Divine Intellect. 


PoRPORTIONATE OBJECT ADEQUATE OBJECT 
Human Intellect material essence 
Angelic Intellect angelic essence Being 
Divine Intellect Divine essence 


The object then of the intellect is being, which 
embraces everything from prime matter which is 
pure potency on to the Actus Purus which is God. 

Since the adequate object of the intellect is being 
in all its latitude, just as the adequate object of 
vision is color in all its latitude, it follows that any 
judgment or reasoning process built on being will 
be valid for the whole range of being. 

Abstracting now from the psychological and the 
chronological origin of judgments, what will be one 
of the first judgments in the ontological order? 


® John of St. Thomas, Logica, t. 1 p. 2. q. 27 art 1; Philosophia 
Naturalis t. 3. p. 3. q. 10 art 2. 


20 3.q. 79 rat. ad 33°C, Glin ap ogee 


Ss 
ee 


THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 205 


The first judgment will be one of affirmation. In 
other words it will be Being = Being, or the prin- 
ciple of identity. Now this principle is not an equa- 
tion for an equation is merely a conditional 
identity; e.g., 3x==6 is true on condition that 
x==2. There is nothing conditional in the affirm- 
ation that being = being, or in the sense that the 
same is the same. Rather it means everything is 
its own nature. Expressed negatively this judg- 
ment is that it is impossible that a thing be itself 
and another thing at the same time and under the 
same formal consideration. This is the principle 
of contradiction. 

This is what is known as the first principle of 
thought, and corresponds perfectly to the three con- 
ditions which Aristotle laid down in his meta- 
physics: (1) The first principle ought to be one 
about which it is impossible to be mistaken. (2) It 
should not be a supposition. (3) It should be nat- 
urally known—that is to say, it must not be 
reached by demonstration.” 

The principle of causality attaches itself to the 
principle of identity and the principle of contradic- 
tion and is an unfolding of both; it can never be 
demonstrated directly, but merely indirectly by an 
appeal to the foregoing propositions. To deny the 
important principle of causality is to assert that 
that which has not in itself the reason of its being, 
has within itself the reason of its being — a manifest 
violation of the principle of contradiction. The 


11 Fourth Book Cf. St. Thomas, Commen, lect. 6. 


206 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Principle of Causality then is not the statement of 
a mere succession of events, nor is it empirical, nor 
is it the psychological expression of will-activity. 
It is intellectuality rooted to being.” 

What is generally called an effect is that which 
has passed from non-being to being. This transi- 
tion cannot be traced to the being which has al- 
ready come into existence, otherwise it would have 
to have been before it was. Here there would be 
violation of the principle of identity and the prin- 
ciple of contradiction. Nothingness can never be 
the cause of being. If something exists, there must 
have been some being distinct from it which brought 
it into existence, or which produced the transition. 
It is in this sense that there never can be an effect 
without a cause. 

The next act of the mind in the ontological or- 
der is reasoning. Reasoning is not merely taking 
things out of a container. The relation between 
the major and the conclusion is one of act and po- 
tency. The syllogism is showing to the mind, by 
its mean term the reason of the identity of the ex- 
tremes, and thus necessitates the mind to see this 
identity in the light of the premises.** 

Every concept is in answer to the ase 
“What is it?” Every judgment is in answer to 
the question, “Is it?” Every reasoning process is 
in answer to the question, “On account of what 
is it?” Thus nothing is intelligible except in func- 


12 Cf, “God and Intelligence ” for a development of these points. 
p. 159 ff. 
18 In Lib. Periherminias. lib. :. c. VII. lect. 10. 


THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 207 


tion of being. Being is the soul of every concept, 
judgment and syllogism. Not even the possible 
is knowable except through it, for the possible is 
that which is capable of being.* 

Now can the mind whose object is being in all its 
latitude, whose principles are transcendental and 
necessary, rise up to a knowledge of what is beyond 
the factors disclosed by experience? First of all, 
there is nothing impossible about such knowledge, 
for all that zs is capable of being known by the mind. 
Secondly, since the principles of reason are not em- 
pirical but necessary, they are capable of leading us 
out of the morass of a spatial-temporal universe 
into the realm of causes, finalities and even God. 

St. Thomas gives five ways in which the existence 
of God can be proved, based upon five notes of the 
universe: three dynamic notes, two static. The 
dynamic notes are— movement, dependency and 
contingency; the static notes are— composition 
and multiplicity. 

It is not our present concern here to elaborate 
the proofs of the existence of God but merely to 
indicate its broad outlines.” Very simply these five 
arguments reduced to the fundamental one of Be- 
ing, can be stated in some such way as this. All 
things in this world are composed of the determined 
and the undetermined, the conditioned and the un- 
conditioned, act and potency, essence and exist- 
ence. In virtue of this composition they change, 


14 In Meta. lib. 5. lect. 14. 
15 Garrigou-Lagrange’s “ Dieu, Son Existence et Sa Nature ” is the 
finest presentation of the Thomistic proofs, 


Sty oe ee 
y cee 
: 


208 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


or evolve or die— evolution without composition 
is impossible. If I seek the reason of this partici- 
pation [ am driven back necessarily to something 
distinct from the composed elements and which 
has grouped or united them together.** Thus one 
mounts up to God in Whom there is no composi- 
tion, but Whose very essence it is to exist, and in 
this He differs from creatures whose existence is 
not their essence. And to ask the cause of God, 
Whose essence it is to exist, is to ask that that which 
has existence as its essence be explained as that 
which has it not, or that that which is First Cause 
be at the same time a second cause, or that God 
shall be at the same time cause and effect. 

But grant that God is known as Being, does it 
follow that we can designate Him properly or know 
anything about His character? ‘There are some 
thinkers who wish to designate God in function of 
evolution, the needs of the age, and in relation to 
our emotions and our democratic form of govern- 
ment. This is not good metaphysics. There are 
certain predicates which in themselves imply no 
imperfection, and these can be applied to God. 
Such ideas are those of being, goodness, truth and 
the like. Being free from imperfection in their 
formal aspect, these notions can be applied ana- 
logically both to God and creatures, thus solving 
the difficulty that there is no proportion between 
the finite and the infinite. “If there is no propor- 
tion between the finite and the infinite, it does not 


48 5.9. 44. alts ts ay 


THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM. 209 


follow that there is no proportionality, since what 
the finite is to the finite, the infinite is to the infinite, 
and thus it is that the similitude of God and crea- 
tures must be understood; namely, that God is in 
the same relation to that which concerns Himself 
as the creature is in relation to that which concerns 
itself.”*’ ‘Take the word “good” for example. I 
can apply it to a book, to a tree, to a dog, to a man, 
and in each case it designates the object. In each 
case it is applied according to the nature of each of 
these things; a book is “good” according to its 
nature; a tree is “good” according to its nature; 
a man is “good” according to his nature. But 
God is Infinite, therefore Goodness will be applied 
to Him in an infinite degree.** ‘The same is true of 
the other concepts. 

The intellect then, thanks to its abstractive power 
and its capacity for a knowledge of being as being 
can rise to the conquest of truths quite beyond the 
mere factors of experience; it can even rise to a 
knowledge of God as First Cause, and in doing so 
is not dealing with a mere symbol but with the ob- 
jective and the real. This leads us to the second 
tenet of Thomistic realism. 

Il. The Intellect can know the nature of the real. 
Nominalism contends that ideas are mere rubrics or 
words under which facts are grouped. God, then, 
through the application of this principle, is merely 
a symbol for the “ideal tendency in things,” or any- 
thing else quite equally vague. It is the contention 


17 De Veritate, q. 23. art. 7 ad 9. 
18 Sheen, “ God and Intelligence,” p. 175 ff. 


210 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


of St. Thomas, on the contrary, that the mind 
knows things before it knows the ideas of things; 
what is known immediately by the mind is the thing 
itself and not its effigy or its image.” “ The stone 
is that which is known and not the idea of the stone, 
except indirectly by the act of reflection when the 
intellect turns back upon itself.” *° The idea then 
is neither a portrait nor an instrumental sign like 
a model which is first known before making known. 
It is a sign, the like of which does not exist in the 
material world, i.e., a formal sign, the nature of 
which is to signify and make known before being 
itself known by the act of reflection. Ideas then 
are the ideas of reality; we know cause, before we 
know the idea of a cause; we know God, before we 
know the idea of God. 

St. Thomas enumerates two conclusions which 
would follow a denial that the idea gives the real: 
(1) Every science would then be concerned, not 
with the objects outside the mind, but only with 
the ideas in it. In other words, science would be 
mental and would have no basis in the real. It is 
rather a strange fact that Thomistic and Medieval 
philosophy which is said to be so unscientific, 
should be the very one to uphold the very reality of 
science; while our modern philosophy which is said 
to be born of science and nourished by it, denies it 
a real right to existence, in denying that its ideas 
are ideas of the real and objective world. (2) If 
the ideas were merely effigies of the real and not the 


19 De Veritate, q. 1. art. 9; q. 5 art. 2. 20 1. q.. 76 aft. 2 a0 ay 


THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 211 


real, then the mind would be forced into a degener- 
ate pragmatism which maintains that whatever 
seems is true. As the Angelic Doctor has no sym- 
pathy for those who deny the reality of science, 
neither has he sympathy for those who are content 
to rest in a mere-seeming truth. He fears individ- 
ual interpretation brought to the facts of nature, in 
which each man would determine for himself what 
is true and what is best.” 

Ideas then are primarily ideas of the real; and 
judgments built upon them are also judgments of 
the real.” ‘The thinking subject is not enclosed 
within himself; therefore he must not seek within 
himself or the confines of his own conscience and 
heart all the knowledge which he needs and all the 
beliefs he can use. Not only that: since the mind 
can know things above experience and know them 
as real and objective, there is no necessity for the 
mock humility of nominalism. That is why the 
mere Will-to-Believe, the Als-Ob Philosophy, and 
Faith Philosophy must always be unsatisfying: they 
are based upon an acknowledged inability to grasp 
things as they really are. Since the mind can rise 
above the factors of experience, since it can know 
God objectively and not as a mere symbol, there is 
no necessity for an hypothesis or “* Will-to-believe.” 


Pre Os Art. : 2. 

22 To reduce the ontological judgments of being to a purely sub- 
jective law, as all Nominalism would do, is to identify two notions 
which are manifestly distinct, namely, the impossible (or the irreali- 
zable) and the inconceivable. It also means to doubt the extra-mental 
reality of the absurd. He who doubts the ontological value of the 
notion of being ought to say: a squared circle is inconceivable, but 
it is not irrealizable outside the mind. 


212 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


These tentatives might do very well if philosophy 
had to despair of acquiring a knowledge of tran- 
scendental objects, but why delight in faint gleams 
of light through latticed windows when one can en- 
joy thesunlight? ‘These prescriptions force us to be- 


lieve without any intellectual justification for such 


a belief. As Flint so well remarks: “ A ‘ will’ virtu- 
ally identified with our own non-intellectual or 
‘passional nature’ is not real will, not will either 
in its proper psychological acceptation, and its re- 
lationship to belief must be on the whole very dif- 
ferent from that of will, properly understood, to 
belief. ‘There is no such act of the mind possible 
as willing to believe what does not seem to be true 
or promise to give pleasure, or in other words, 
which seems destitute of any reason or evidence 
for being deemed true or good. There is no mere 
‘will to believe’; a merely willed belief is a sham 
belief; it is no real belief. ... The part which 
willing has in the game is this: the mind can either 
will to follow along the paths on which the true light 
shines, and in which alone therefore right belief 
can be attained, or will to deviate from them, and 
so wander into the regions of darkness and delu- 
sion’ 

The same is true of the “ wish to believe.” “If,” 
writes Archbishop Whateley, “a mode of effectual 
and speedy cure be proposed to a sick man, he can- 
not but wish that the result of his inquiries concern- 
ing it may be a well-founded conviction of the safety 


23 « Agnosticism,” p. 451 ff. 


THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 213 


and the efficacy of the remedy prescribed. It would 
be no mark of wisdom to be indifferent to the resto- 
ration of health, but if his wishes should lead him to 
put implicit confidence in the remedy without any 
just grounds for it, he would deservedly be taxed 
with folly. In like manner, a good man will indeed 
wish to find the evidence of the Christian religion 
satisfactory, but will weigh the evidence more care- 
fully on account of the importance of the question.” 

“T cannot agree with those philosophers,” writes 
L. P. Jacks, “who maintain that religion is based 
on the will to believe. The two are clearly con- 
nected, but it would be truer to say that the will to 
believe is based on religion . . . God is not a prod- 
uct, but the author and living principle of the will 
to believe.” * 

Hence these philosophers who tell us: “ believe 
what is in line of your needs,” “ believe that life is 
worth living,” “believe that the universe still has 
values ” — but all this advice about believing does 
not create the fact. It is a kind of mental hypno- 
tism. No belief without a sound basis can pro- 
duce good. 

“The argument that we should believe certain 
things because they are helpful to what we have 
assumed to be practical interests, is a wilful con- 
fusion between what may be pleasant for the time 
being and what is determined by the weight of ra- 
tional evidence. ‘Theoretic reason in the form of 
logical science is the effort to determine the weight 


24 “ Religious Perplexities,” 1923, p. 35. 


214 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


of things. To tip the scales by the will to believe is 
childish foolishness since things will generally con- 
tinue to weigh what they do despite this tipping.” ”° 

The Als-Ob, another non-intellectual substitute 
offered by Professor Hans Vaihinger” is a fiction 
and in the all important question of deciding relig- 
ious beliefs it is not only not serviceable but posi- 
tively harmful. Living as if we had money will 
never keep us out of the poor house, but would be 
the quickest way of getting us in. Living as if he 
were well fed will never keep a hungry man from 
starving. The sailor cast on the salty waters of the 


sea might live as if the waters were not salty, but he 
would never slake his thirst. The 4ls-Ob philoso- 


phy is the philosophy of hypocrisy ; it means pulling © 


the wool over your own eyes and living as if there 
really was a God. Certainly, such a foundation for 
religion is no foundation at all. 

The reason for living “as if” there was a God 
rather than as if there were not, must have either 
a mental or a real foundation. If it is only mental, 
then there is no reason for choosing “ as if there was 
a God” rather than “as if there were not,” any 
more than there is for living as if there were, or 
as if there were no ghosts. If the foundation is real, 
then we are not free to live “ as if there were not”; 
only one alternative is possible, just as if my hand 
is really burnt, I am not free to live as if it were 
not burnt. 


25 Morris R. Cohen, “The Insurgence against Reason,” Journal 
of Philosophy and Scientific Methods, Vol. 2, 1925, p. 126. 
26 “ Die Philosophie des Als-Ob,” 1911. 


<ast 4 = 
ae i 


THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 215 


Living “ as if ” there was a God is not the same as 
living as if there were centaurs. The world can 
plod along without centaurs, but the world cannot 
be a world without God. God is the principle of all 
that is, and without Him there is nothing that is. 
It is easier to go through life “‘ as if ” there was food, 
yet without taking it, than to go through life “as 
if” there was no God. 

Furthermore, God’s existence does not hinge 
upon His utility for me, any more than air begins 
to exist because of its utility for my lungs. God 
does not exist, because He is useful; He is useful, 
if you will, because He exists. If His existence de- 
pended upon His usefulness, then He would exist 
for Mr. A. who finds Him useful and would not 
exist for Mr. B. who believes He can get along with- 
out Him. God would then twinkle in and out of 
existence like a star, depending upon the individual 
need and utility. 

What has been said about the will-to-believe ap- 
plies equally to Professor Perry’s rather disconso- 
late attempt to bring in a hypothetic God as the 
ground of values. This distinguished Harvard Pro- 
fessor argues that whether or not God actually ex- 
ists does not alter the fact that He can affect the 
manner of our living, for an unrealized proposition 
(a man ten feet tall) may be true and affect a pres- 
ent judgment (such a man would be taller than any 
living man).” 

It is very well to say that an unrealized truth may 


27 “ General Theory of Value,” p. 687. 


216 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


affect the truth of a present proposition, but to pass 
from the logical to the real order is quite another 
matter, and this is the error Professor Perry com- 
mits. Where there is no causal dependence between 
a future unrealized truth and a present one, then 
the latter may stand without the first, but where 
there is dependence, then the other truth must be 
realized and actualized, otherwise the second one 
would be meaningless. Such is the case with God 
and us. Weare like the rays of the sun which dis- 
appear with the setting of the sun. We depend on 
God, and we cannot consider our existence apart 
from His. Considering God as hypothetical would 
be more absurd than considering all the food we will 
need between now and the end of our lives as hypo- 
thetical and yet not affecting our present existence. 
We need the food for our physical life and we need 
God for our very existence. 

Nominalism has shifted the emphasis on the real- 
ity and objectivity of God and religion to a sub- 
jective outlook on the universe. As Professor W. 
Selbie so well says: “ The net result of this type of 
reasoning is that these psychologists would tie us 
down to a purely subjective view of religion. It is 
no more than an outcome of human activity. They 
confuse God with the idea of God and make it a 
projection of man’s hopes, fears and ideals. In 
other words, God is but a phantasy which has a 
certain value for man’s moral and spiritual de- 
velopment. ‘The worship of God is a form of 
infantilism and survives because it meets a certain 
elementary need and satisfies the sense of depend- 


» i 


THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 217 


ence which man never altogether loses. So con- 
science becomes an emotion and sin is merely moral 
disease, the result of expressed or unsatisfied in- 
stincts, and to be explained in terms of the complex. 
Now we have here an extraordinary mixture of 
truth and falsehood, of legitimate and illegitimate 
reasoning. It is an attempt to explain religion, 
which really explains it away, and the air of scien- 
tific assurance with which it is done makes it very 
convincing to untutored minds. ‘The real ques- 
tion at issue is not merely, How does the human 
mind work in relation to religion and the idea of 
God? but, ls there a God, and have religious ideas 
any objective reality?” 

Either the idea of God and all other spiritual 
concepts ultimately correspond to some objective 
reality or they do not; if they do correspond to 
something objective, then it is nonsense to speak of 
the “‘ changed conception of God”; or “a new no- 
tion of religion ”’; if they do not correspond to any- 
thing objective, then the idea of God and religion 
is only a mental nightmare and the stuff that 
dreams are made of, and we are dreamers instead 
of philosophers. It is often said, in full accordance 
with the nominalist doctrine, that what is right in 
one age is wrong in another; and that God as Su- 
preme Being must give way to our modern concep- 
tion of God as “ creative power”; that miracles as 
a Divine intervention in nature must now be under- 
stood as a “novelty ” in the process of evolution; 
that original sin must no longer be understood as 

28 W. Selbie, “ Psychology of Religion,” p. 297. 


218 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


the loss of original justice, but as a “ fall in the evo- 
lutionary process”; that revelation is no longer 
God speaking to man in confirmation of doctrine, 
but God immanent in all nature and one with it, for 
all earth is crammed with heaven “ and every com- 
mon bush aflame with God”; that Christ is no 
longer to be understood as a Redeemer, but, in ac- 
cordance with modern ideals, as a great moral 
teacher to be ranked with Buddha and Confucius; 
that Redemption is not a purchase of divine life 
for sinners, but merely an inspiration for the be- 
liever to convince him of the love of God; that the 
Church is not the continuation of Christ as the 
Totus Christus or mystic body, but an organization 
standing between us and God; that religion is no 
longer the ordination of man to God by knowledge, 
love and service, but only “ faith in the conservation 
of values”; that religion has no need of God, but 
only a conviction that we should live as if God ex- 
isted; that God is not a reality but only a “ mental 
projection”; that God is not supreme ‘Truth, 
Love and Goodness, but only “society divinized ”; 
that God is not the Providence which rules 
this world, but merely a name to symbolize 
the trust that we can put into the universe; that 
God is not a Being on whom we are dependent, for 
“in all things it is well to exalt the dignity of Man, 
by freeing him as far as possible from the tyranny 
of the non-human power”; * that God is not per- 
sonal for “it would be difficult to estimate the harm 


29 Bertrand Russell, “‘ Free Man’s Worship in Mysticism and Logic,” 
1925, p. 46 ff. 


THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 219 


done by the conviction that for its ethical improve- 
ment society is dependent on a personal God; * 
that God is not a reality but only “ the name, not of 
the whole of things, God forbid, but only of the ideal 
tendency of things”; ** that God, in accordance 
with new physics and the quantum theory is no 
longer transcendent but the “ideal harmony of the 
universe.” ” 

And all this is perfectly logical, if God is only 
a name and has no objective reality. But if God 
really is, then it is absurd to say that He is one thing 
in the fifteenth century and another in the twenti- 
eth. This is equivalent to saying that a thing is true 
at three o’clock but false at half-past four, and that 
two apples plus two apples make four apples on 
Monday but not on Friday. That all this should 
be called progress is a mystery, as if there could be 


30 James Leuba, “ Psychology of Religious Mysticism,” p. 329. 

31 “Letters of William James,” Vol. 2, p. 269. 

82 A sample of nominalism carried to its limits is to be found in 
“The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas” by McGiffert, p. 241, in which 
he writes: “ In the medieval conception of God’s character... .. God 
was thought of as the avenger of sin, and, at the same time as a merciful 
being, providing men with a way of escape from the consequences of their 
transgression. . . . Gradually, with the spread of the idea of the ability 
and worth of the natural man, traditional notions of God began to 
change. ... ‘The opposition was greatly strengthened, particularly in 
the eighteenth century, by the rapid spread of the idea of human equality, 
and the doctrine of equal rights forall. ... As the rights of men over 
against each other and over against their rules grew, their rights over 
against God received fuller recognition. ... As democratic ideals 
crowded out the aristocratic and authoritarian ideals of an earlier day, 
of course the character of God appeared in a different perspective. His 
absoluteness and his responsibility only to his own character gave way to 
the notion of relativity and responsibility to man. They, too, have 
rights and God is bound to respect them.” ‘Thus within five hundred 
years God has changed from the King of Kings to the “ President of the 
Commonwealth,” and men are no longer His subjects, but He is 
subject to men! 


220 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


progress without a fixed term. If we deny the sub- 
stance of things and the reality of things, and dis- 
solve entities into environment, then we can never 
have a goal for progress. If we are going to make 
God just a whirling vortex of Space-Time then we 
are no longer free to speak of God, just as an artist 
is no longer free to draw a giraffe if he draws it with 
a short neck. If God is Fixed, Abiding and Immu- 
table, then there is room for progress, but if God is 
progressing from a king to a president, then we do 
not know whether we are progressing or not. The 
one thing in the world that never progresses is the 
idea of progress. “If the standard changes, how 
can there be improvement which implies a stand- 
ard? If women, say, desire to be elegant, it may 
be that they are improved at one time by growing 
fatter and at another time by growing thinner. But 
you cannot say that they are improved by ceasing 
to wish to be elegant and beginning to wish to be 
oblong. Nietzsche started a nonsensical idea that 
men had once sought as good what we now call evil; 
if it were so, we could not talk of surpassing or even 
falling short of them. How can you overcome 
Jones if you walk in the other direction? You 
cannot discuss whether one people has succeeded 
more in being miserable than another succeeded 
in being happy. It would be like discussing whether 
Milton was more puritanical than a pig is fat.” * 
If God is only a name then there is little to choose 
between the old idolatry and the new, the ancient 


83 G. K. Chesterton, “ Orthodoxy,” p. 62. 


THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 221 


idols being fashioned by hands, and the modern 
idols being fashioned by mind. Isaias speaks of 
the old as follows: “The carpenter hath stretched 
out his rule, he hath formed it with a plane; he hath 
made it with corners, and hath fashioned it round 
with the compass; and he hath made the image of 
man, as it were a beautiful man dwelling in a house. 
He hath cut down cedars, taken the holm, and the 
oak that stood among the trees of the forest; he 
hath planted the pine tree, which the rain hath 
nourished . . . he made a god and adored it; he 
hath made a graven thing, and bowed down be- 
fore it.” * 

‘The modern idol maker goes not to the forest 
but to the laboratory, and there, with the help of 
scientific concepts moulds the kind of God he will 
adore. Such is the penalty of a philosophy which 
no longer speaks of God but the “idea of God ” — 
and herein lies the difference between much of 
contemporary philosophy of religion and that of 
Scholasticism. Professor James B. Pratt, so con- 
spicuous in the philosophical world for his sane 
thinking, reminds his fellow workers that it is bad 
psychology to confine ourselves solely to pragmatic 
factors in the God-idea because “ it neglects alto- 
gether certain real elements in the religious con- 
sciousness, whether found in philosopher, priest, or 
humble worshipper—men who through all the 
ages have truly meant by ‘God’ something more 
than ‘the idea of God,’ something genuinely tran- 


34 Isaias, XLIV 13 ff. 


222 + RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


scendent. It is bad epistemology because based 
ultimately upon a viciously subjective view of 
meaning, a view which would identify our objects 
with our ideas of our objects, and which, carried to 
its logical conclusion would result in solipsism.” * 

It is God, then, and not the “idea of God ” with 
which philosophy is concerned and which men wor- 
ship. We cannot make God to our image and 
likeness for God has first made us to His image and 
likeness. When philosophy reaches a point where 
it insists that we need a new idea of God, it is time 
for it to make a philosophical examination of con- 
science. If there is any fitting to be done, it is we 
who ought to fit ourselves to God, and not God to 
ourselves.** ‘To speak of God and mean only “a 
principle of concretion”; to speak of Deity and 
mean only “ quality’; to speak of the Divine and 
mean only the “harmony among epochal occa- 
sions”; to speak of religion and mean only “a 
projection into the roaring loom of time of a con- 
centrated unified complex of psychical values ” is to 
adopt a license of language and thought which can 
only lead to a confusion worse confounded. It is to 
turn back the hands of the clock and yet to speak 
with a voice which we would have never known 
unless the clock had long since advanced. It is 
to strip God and religion of all spiritual content and 
yet to use these words that have mirrored for ages 


85 « Religious Consciousness,” p. 209. 

36 “Veritas que est in anima causatur a rebus non sequitur 
estimationem anime, sed existentia rerum.” De Veritate, q. 1 art. 2 
2 ad 3. 


THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 223 


the highest associations that are unintelligible apart 
from it. If we are only to have a “ mental projec- 
tion” or an “epochal occasion ” then let us say so, 
and we will know what we are about. Let us not 
cheat ourselves with phantoms and effigies of God 
and religion, when we have emptied heaven of all its 
reality and left nothing for the starving heart but 
empty names. Why should we force upon theology 
the terms of physics, psychology and a spatio- 
temporal continuum when these can mean little 
more than sounding brass and tinkling cymbal? If 
God is nothing more than a “name for the ideal 
tendency in things” then philosophy, history, and 
art are cheated. And certainly, if God were only 
a name it would be much more preferable to look 
upon Him rather as a King than a “nisus.” It 
is incomprehensible to a thinking mind to see how 
philosophy and civilization are enriched by ceasing 
to think of God as God and beginning to think of 
Him as a blind and whirling space-time configura- 
tion dancing dizzily in an Einsteinian universe, 
plunging forward along a path of which He 1s igno- 
rant, toward a goal of which He knows nothing 
whatever. At the present time God is really denied; 
but nominally asserted. The next step will be to 
eliminate even the name. That will be the extinc- 
tion of daylight; then we shall be marching to the 
music of ghosts and not the voice of reason. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE FALLACY OF THE UNIFORM METHOD OF SCIENCE 


HERE is one predominating argument ad- 

vanced for the new notion of God and relig- 

ion, and that is the necessity of harmoniz- 
ing it with the latest discoveries of science. The 
necessity of accommodating religion to the new 
physics, it will be recalled, constitutes the burden of 
Professor A. N. Whitehead’s “ Religion in the Mak- 
ing,” as well as Professor Alexander’s “Space, 
Time and Deity.” It is even the progress of science 
to which appeal is made by psychologists and socio- 
logists who would give us a God born of their science 
and their method. Professor H. W. Carr, in a 
“metaphysical meditation ” on “ Changing Back- 
ground in Religion and Ethics” writes, “We of 
the scientific age have lost interest in the theological 
cosmologies not alone on the ground of their naive 
anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism, but be- 
cause being the reflection of a pre-scientific age they 
no longer express our attitude to the world prob- 
lem.* ... The problem of religion and ethics in 
modern thought is not, as I conceive it, to harmonize 
natural science with the old religious concepts, but 
to reform our concept of God in accordance with 


ae sate Yo 


224 


eer 
oa 
Pp - 
7 4 


FALLACY OF UNIFORM METHOD 225 


our progress in interpreting our knowledge of the 
physical world.”* ‘There is modern philosophy 
of religion in a nutshell; our concept of God 
must be reformed to meet requirements of modern 
science. 

A critical appreciation of this view does not mean 
taking sides on the so-called conflict of religion and 
science. Indeed the two are not and can never be 
in conflict, for God is the source of both. The phil- 
osopher is right in saying that there must be 
harmony between the two. Only when he asserts 
that the concept of God must be revised to match 
the color of science does the problem begin. In 
other words, the problem is, how far can science go 
in its demand for a new kind of God, and of what 
value is the God born of science and nurtured by its 
laboratories. Put in question form the problem in- 
volves these three aspects: 

1. What is the Value of Empirical Science? 

2. What is the Value of a Philosophy of Nature built on 
empirical science? 


3. What application of these conclusions can be made to 
religion? 


I. What is the Value of Empirical Science? 


To ask this question not only of the modern 
philosophers of science but also of the great lumi- 
nary, Thomas Aquinas, is both interesting and 
important. The Angelic Doctor, following Aris- 
totle, distinguishes between deductive sciences, 


2p. 6. 


226 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


which reveal the intelligent necessities inherent in 
things, and the inductive sciences, which reveal the 
reason of being of things through a general observa- 
tion of their effects or manifestations. The first 
are sciences of explanation, or sciences of the propter 
quid; the second are sciences of observation or the 
sciences of the guia. The first are outside of time 
because they are concerned with natures apart from 
their concrete existence; e.g., whether or not a con- 
crete triangle ever existed, it would still be true that 
all the angles of a Euclidean triangle are equal to 
two right angles. The second are not wholly outside 
time because they study natures in their material 
condition. : 

Inductive sciences at the present day are com- 
monly called empirical sciences, or more simply 
Science. Now, what is the value of Empirical 
Science, and what necessity does it bring with it? 
St. Thomas holds that all sciences of observation - 
and description, such as physics, biology, geology, 
are only probable in their conclusions. He reasons 
as follows: Such sciences deal with the nature of 
certain things in their material existence; e.g., the 
biologist studies life by studying this life either 
under a microscope or with a scalpel. But the 
nature of a thing, thanks to matter, is capable of 
indefinite multiplication; the nature of man, for 
example, is not confined to a hundred possible men, 
but has been realized in millions in the past, and 
will continue to be realized in millions in the future. 
Peter is not Paul, and yet both are men. They 


FALLACY OF UNIFORM METHOD 227 


are the same in nature, but differ, thanks to mate- 
rial configurations which constitute the principle 
of individuation.’ 

Since matter is capable of multiplying natures 
indefinitely, it follows that there is no limit to the 
possible singular instances which science may study. 
But the possibility of error increases with the multi- 
plication of particulars. Consequently, so long as 
there is wanting a verification in every possible in- 
stance, there can be no absolute certainty in 
science.* 

Sciences of pure observation then are probable in 
their conclusions because of the variability of the 
particular instances which they study. This does 
not mean to assert there is no certainty in such 


8 Incertitudo causatur propter transmutabilitatem materiz sensibilis 
Post. Analy. lib. x lect. 14 Infinitum congruit materiz que est individua- 
tionis principium. . . . Quanto magis procedetur versus particularia, 
tanto magis itur versus infinitum. /d:d., Contingentia in rebus sensibili- 
bus est conditio consequens materiam individuantem sensibilia. Cajetan 
in 1. q. 86, art. 4 X. In order to conclude to a universal and necessary 
conclusion, the enumeration of singular instances should be complete. 
“Oportet supponere quod accepta sint omnia que continentur sub 
aliquo communi; alioquin nec inducens poterit ex singularibus acceptis 
concludere universale. . . . Patet igitur quod inducens, facta inducti- 
one quod Socrates currat et Plato et Cicero, non potest ex necessitate con- 
cludere quod omnis homo currat, nisi detur sibi a respondente quod 
nihil aluid contineatur sub homine quam ista que inducta sunt. Post 
Analy. lib. 2. lect. 4: n. 4. 

Cf. John of St. Thomas, Cursus phil. Thomisticus. Logica. 1 Pars. 
Illustrationes q. 8 art. 2. 

# “Ex hoc vero quod ejus consideratio est circa res mobiles, et 
que non uniformiter se habent, ejus cognitio est minus firma, quia ejus 
demonstrationes, ut in majori parte sunt ex hoc quod contigit aliquando 
aliter se habere: et ideo quanto aliqua scientia magis appropinquat ad 
singularia, sicut scientie operative, ut medicina, alchimia et moralis, 
minus possunt habere de certitudine propter multitudinem eorum quz 
consideranda sunt in talibus scientiis, quo quodlibet si omittatur, fre- 
quenter erratur, propter eorum variabilitatem.” In De Trinitate 
Boetii, q. 6 art. 1. 


228 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


sciences. Scientists do affirm, as a matter of fact, 
a necessary bond between subject and predicate 
when they enunciate a scientific conclusion, but 
this enunciation always supposes the concrete 
existence of the subjects studied, and here there is 
limitation. 

After enunciating the principle that empirical 
sciences lack absolute certainty because possibility 
of error increases with particular manifestations, 
St. Thomas proceeds to carry the principle into prac- 
tice. There is no reason, he says, why the Ptole- 
maic system of the universe should be the true one. 
Later on, when scientific methods are improved and 
scientific instruments perfected, it may be that a 
new theory will be propounded which will be more in 
accord with facts.” St. Thomas reminds us also 
that Aristotle did not accept all the scientific con- 
clusions of his day, and in doing so was perfectly 
within reason for they were only problematic and 
by no means absolutely certain.© The Angelic 
Doctor himself is not certain that the astronomical 
theories of his own day explain the heavens and the 


5 Licet enim talibus suppositionibus factis appareant solvere non 
tamen oportet dicere has suppositiones esse veras, quia forte secundum 
aliquem alium modum nondum ab hominibus comprehensum apparentia 
circa stellas salvantur. In Com. De Coelo. lib. 2. lect. 17 n. 2. 

6 Dicendum quod Aristoteles non fuit hujus opinionis, sed existi- 
mavit quod omnes motus ceelestium corporum sunt circa centrum terre 
_ . « « postmodum autem Hypparchus et Ptolemeus adinvenerunt motus 
eccentricorum et epicyclorum ad salvandum ea que apparent sensibus 
in corporibus ccelestibus, unde hoc non est demonstratum, sed suppositio 
quedam. De Ceelo. lib. 1 lect. 3... . Ad octavum dicendum, quod 
opinio Ptolemzi de epicyclis et eccentricis non videtur consonare princi- 
piis naturalibus, que Aristotelis ponit, et ideo illa opinio sectatoribus 
Aristotelis non placet. In De Trinitate Boetii, q. 4 art. 3 ad 8; Cf. 
Metaphysics lib, 12, lect. 10. De Ccelo, lib. 1, lect. 3. n. 7. 


NTN Pe 
ye git ce 


FALLACY OF UNIFORM METHOD 229 


‘ 


movement of the sun and stars for “some other 


theory might explain them.” * 

Now, it is quite a remarkable fact that modern 
philosophers of science are in agreement with St. 
Thomas on the question of the value of empirical 
sciences. St. Thomas holds that inasmuch as they 
are based on incomplete induction, they can give 
only probable certitude. Our contemporaries hold 
that scientific conclusions are only provisory ap- 
proximations of reality, and not its adequate 


representation. Such scientists as P. Duhem,* H. 
Poincaré,’ G. Milhaud,*® E. Boutroux,* E. Meyer- 
son, Hugo Dingler,* O. W. Richardson“ and 


7 1, q. 32 art. 1 ad 2, Cf. In Job. XXXVIII, lect. 2, where St. 
Thomas shows a connection between scientific theories and “ debilitas 
cognitionis humane.” Also, De Ceelo, lib. 2 lect. 17, n. 1 and 8; The 
sole ambition, says St. Thomas, that one can have concerning the explan- 
ation of the comets is to arrive at a “ possible solution.” ‘The reason is 
because in this matter sensible knowledge can teach us so little. Meteor. 
lib. 1. lect. 11, n. 1. ‘The same is true of the study of earthquakes; only 
a truth, “ aliquid modo ” is possible. Meteor. lib. 1. lect. 1. n. 7 and n. 
9 Physics and the scientie medi@ because they treat sensible and particular 
things are less certain than mathematics, Post Anal. lib. 1. lect. 41. n. 
3; lect. 42. n. 3; Meta. lib. 1 lect. 2; lib. XI, lect. 7; in De Trinitate 
Boetii, q. 6 art. 1. 

8 “Ya Theorie Physique,” Paris, 2nd ed., 1914, pp. 53-76. 

9 “Ta Valeur de la Science,” 28th ed., Paris, 1920. ‘La Science 
et l’Hypothése,” 36th ed., Paris, 1920. ‘‘ Derniéres Pensees,” Paris, 
1924. 

10 Essai sur les Conditions et les Limites de la Certitude Logique, 
2nd ed., Paris, 1898. 

11 “ Science and Religion,” New York, 1905. 

12 «De )’Explication dans les Sciences,” Vol. 2, Paris, 1921; Vol. 
I, pp. 14, 15. An excellent survey of the principal theories of the present 
day is to be found in an article by Dr. M. F. Renoirte, “ La Theorie 
Physique,” in the Revue Neo-Scolastique of Louvain, 1923, pp. 349- 


75° 

18 Physik und Hypothese,? Leipzig, 1921; “Grundlagen der 
Physik,” Berlin, 1923, p. 172. 

14 “The state of physics at the present time is not unlike the 


230 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


others may differ in the detailed treatment they 
give to the problem, but at bottom all are in perfect 
agreement. Science does not penetrate into the 
essence or nature of physical things; this it leaves 
tothe metaphysician. It is content to summarize in 
the most complete and commodious fashion data 
revealed by experience, describing rather than ex- 
plaining. ‘“‘ Modern experimental science,” writes 
E.. Boutroux, “‘ just because it is based solely upon 
experience, appears as limited in its range, whether 
on the side of theory or on the side of practice. .. . 
Science has in reality occupied herself with the 
search and the discovery of hypothetical definitions 
which enable her to interrogate nature. ... I call 
science, the hypothesis of constant relations between 
phenomena.” *° 
_ Professor Gilbert N. Lewis, in his Silliman Me- 
morial Lectures in Yale University, developed the 
same idea concerning the contingent character of 
science: “‘ The scientist is a practical man and his 
are practical aims. He does not seek the ultimate, 
but the proximate. He does not speak of the last 
analysis, but rather the next approximation.” * 
It is not to our present purpose to discuss these 
opinions critically or to distinguish between laws of 


political and economic condition of the globe.” ‘ Problems of Modern 
Science,” 1922, p. 79. 

15 “ Ainsi nous ne pouvons nourrir l’illusion que les lois que nous 
decouvrons soient veritablement des ‘lois de la nature”... Ce ne 
sont que des lois de la nature en ses rapports avec notre sensation et notre 
intelligence.” “Science and Religion,” pp. 242-244. EE. Meyerson, 
op. cit. Vol. 1, p. 17. 

16 «“ Anatomy of Science,” 1926, p. 6. 


FALLACY OF UNIFORM METHOD 231 


nature and scientific descriptions of these laws; 
neither is it to our purpose to examine whether or 
not the foundations for the Thomistic and the 
modern conclusions are the same. 

We are only stating that modern scientists (not 
the popularizers of science) and St. Thomas are in 
accord concerning the value of empirical science; 
viz., its conclusions are only provisional and prob- 
lematic. They are generalizations based on ex- 
perience and often expressed for the sake of easy 
handling in algebraic terms, but new experiences 
and new discoveries may overthrow them and rele- 
gate them to the limbo of obsolete theories. The 
rock-sureness of “Science” does not exist in the 
mind of the scientists themselves, though it does 
live and throb in the minds of publicists and propa- 
gandists. Scientists themselves disclaim they pos- 
sess ultimate truth; rather they look upon it as a 
horizon toward which they are proceeding. Modern 
science, as testified by its greatest masters, concerns 
itself only with the relations of concomitance and 
succession among the phenomena, in the measure 
that its instruments and methods permit. It may 
and does seek the antecedent phenomena, but never 
the cause in a metaphysical sense. This does not 
mean to say that science is agnostic; agnosticism is 
a philosophical doctrine, and empirical science is 
distinct from philosophy by the specialization im- 
posed on its methods. One cannot reproach the 


17 Cf, F. X. Pfeifer, “ Widerstreiten die Wunder den Naturgezet- 
zen, der Werden Letztere durch die Ersteren Aufgehoben? ” Phil. 
Jahrbuch, 1893, pp. 287, 288. 


232 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


scientific method: for not attaining realities which 
it does not assume to consider. 

Science may be different in its methods in the 
thirteenth and in the twentieth century; new the- 
ories of the heavens may have supplanted the old, 
but when one descends to the rock bottom, the 
twentieth century is repeating or echoing the thir- 
teenth in asserting the probability and approxima- 
tive character of the conclusions of empirical 
sciences. 


II. What ts the Value of a Philosophy of Nature 
built on Empirical Science? 


Two elements go into the make-up of every empir- 
ical science: observation of facts and interpretation 
of these facts. Observation takes its point of 
departure in the sensible world.** The steps in 
this cognitive process are the following: the 
conservation of the action of particular instances 
by the memory, then the repetition of these in- 
stances which constitutes what is known as the 
experiment.” 

Observation is a very simple matter. A cat walk- 
ing through a laboratory may see exactly the same 
thing in a test-tube that the chemist sees, and may 
even see it better in the dark, but the cat is not a 
scientist. What differentiates the two is the second 
element; viz., the reflection which the scientist 
brings to this phenomena, or the application of intel- 


18 Post. Analy. lib. 1. lect. 30, n. 4-7. 
19 lib. 2 c. 76 and 83. 


FALLACY OF UNIFORM METHOD 233 


lectual principles to the data before him.” Experi- 


ments alone do not make knowledge, for so far as 
the experiments are concerned we are no wiser after 
the hundredth than we were after the first. ‘To 
affirm a constant character of a common subject is 
mere repetition. There is arithmetical universality ; 
there is a multiplication of facts; experience 
abounds but there is no knowledge. There is merely 
a plurality of objects accidentally juxtaposed. The 
only way in which knowledge can be gained from 
these facts is to reduce them to unity by intellectual 
abstraction which alone makes laws possible. 

Now we may ask this question: Is the science of 
the twentieth century better than the science of the 
thirteenth century? First, as regards observation of 
phenomena there can be no doubt that our science 
is superior. We have better instruments, better 
methods and better technique. Inventions such as 
the microscope, the X-Ray and the telescope have 
permitted a study and penetration of detail of which 
our predecessors were wholly ignorant. Professor 
Whitehead is the authority for the statement that 
‘in science, the most important thing that has hap- 
pened during the last forty years is the advance in 
instrumental design.” ** But though our observa- 
tion of nature is far better developed than that of 
the ancients, it does not follow that our interpreta- 
tion is necessarily better. Better instruments do not 


20 Ex sensibus fiunt in nobis memorize ex quibus experimenta de 
rebus accipimus, per que ad comprehendum universalia scientiarum et 
artrium principia pervenimus. C. G. lib. 2 cap. 83. Post, Analy. lib. 
e-lect. 200n. 11, 

21 “ Science and the Modern World,” 1925, p. 166. 


234 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


insure a better philosophy of science any more than 
a perfect violin insures good music irrespective of 
who plays on it. Professor Whitehead leans favor- 
ably to such a conclusion when he says “ the reason 
why we are on a higher imaginative level is not 
because we have a finer imagination but because 
we have better instruments.” *” ‘There seems to be 
little doubt that the interpretation of the facts of 
nature by a realist like St. Thomas who admits that 
reality exists independently of the mind’s knowing 
it, would lead to a truer science than the interpreta- 
tion of nature by a Kantist for whom space and time 
are purely subjective moulds which unify experi- 
ence. An Hegelian interpretation of the atom in 
terms of thesis, antithesis and synthesis is apt to. 
carry one into an unreal world much more quickly 
than the interpretation of an Albert the Great. It 
seems hardly open to dispute that a philosophy 
which interprets observed facts in the light of com- 
mon sense, a philosophy which believes that there is 
such a thing as truth and that science is useful in 
just the proportion that it is true and in correspond- 
ence with the objective reality, is far nobler and bet- 
ter suited to guide us scientifically and humanly 
than a philosophy which makes the true the useful, 
or which makes the mind the measure of reality, 
and which refuses to look upon the laws of nature as 
anything else than mere mental configurations and 
endowments of a blind weaver working at his loom. 

These preliminaries discussed, it now becomes 


22 “ Science and the Modern World,” 1925, p. 166. 


FALLACY OF UNIFORM METHOD 235 


apropos to ask what value has a Philosophy of 
Nature built upon an Empirical Science? A Phi- 
losophy of Nature is a combination of the twofold 
method of science, observation and interpretation, 
except on a far larger scale. In a Philosophy of 
_ Nature the observed facts now become the empirical 
science, and the reflection on a consequently larger 
scale becomes philosophy. 

In order to understand the value attributed to a 
Philosophy of Nature by St. Thomas and the Scho- 
lastics it is necessary to recall their outlook on its 
constitution. Being complex, i.e., a union of Nature 
and Philosophy, the particular relation of one to the 
other is all-important. There are three supreme 
sciences according to Aristotle and St. Thomas 
based on three degrees of abstraction — Physics, 
Mathematics, and Philosophy. In an admirable 
passage in “ De Trinitate Boetii,” the Angelic Doc- 

tor enumerates the reason for this hierarchy of 
sciences. | 

Physics is concerned with matter inasmuch as 
it is moveable, sensible and clothed with certain 
qualities and properties which are experimentally 
observable; it considers things in their concrete and 
material reality, making abstraction only from the 
fact that a thing is singular. This is the first degree 
of abstraction. 

Mathematics considers material things just as 
physics, but it makes abstraction from all their 
sensible properties such as light, heat, color, and 
considers only quantity, number, or extent by itself. 


236 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


The object of thought cannot exist without sensible 
matter, but it can be conceived without it, for 
nothing sensible or experimental or tangible enters 
into the definition of a line or a cube root. This is 
the second degree of abstraction. 

Finally, the human mind can concern itself with 
things, not merely inasmuch as they are in move- 
ment, Or inasmuch as they are quantitative, but 
simply inasmuch as they are or have being. There 
are certain objects of thought which can not only 
be conceived without matter, but which can 
also exist without matter, such as God, Justice, 
Fortitude, Beauty and Goodness. This sci- 
ence which concerns itself with being as being 
is Metaphysics and belongs to the third degree of 
abstraction.” 

Philosophy of Nature for St. Thomas was a com- 
bination of the first and third degrees of abstraction, 


23 “Quedam igitur sunt speculabilium que dependent a materia 
secundum esse, quia non nisi in materia esse possunt et hec distinguntur, 
quia dependent quedam a materia secundum esse et intellectum, sicut, illa 
in quorum diffinitione ponitur materia sensibilis: unde sine materia 
sensibili intelligi non possunt, ut in diffinitione hominis oportet accipere 
carnem et ossa, et de his est physica sive scientia naturalis. Quaedam vero 
quamvis dependeant a materia secundum esse, non tamen secundum 
intellectum, quia in eorum diffinitionibus non ponitur materia sensibilis, 
ut linea et numerus, et de his est mathematica. Quzedam vero sunt 
speculabilia qua non dependent a materia secundum esse, quia sine 
materia esse possunt, sive numquam sint in materia, sicut Deus et 
angelus, sive in quibusdam sint in materia et in quibusdam non, ut 
substantia, qualitas et actus unum et multa, et hujusmodi, de quibus 
omnibus est theologia, id est divina scientia, quia precipium cognitorum 
in ea est Deus. 

Alio nomine dicitur metaphysica, id set transphysica, quia post 
physicam discenda occurrit nobis, quibus ex sensibilibus competit in in- 
sensibilia devenire. Dicitur etiam philosophia prima in quantum scientiz 
alie ab ea principia sua accipientes eam sequuntur.” lib, Boet. de Trinitate, 
a. 6 art. < ad a1 


FALLACY OF UNIFORM METHOD 237 


1.€., a combination of the science of the contingent, 
and the science of the necessary.” 

There is a hierarchy among the sciences as there 
is between the various orders of creation. The 
nobler must always rule the less noble, the inferior 
must be attracted by the superior. Now since the 
noblest science is metaphysics — Aristotle called it 
the “‘ divine science ” — because of the transcend- 
ence of its object, it follows that it must let its light 
shine upon other sciences with more limited objects. 
It is metaphysics or philosophy which justifies and 
defends the principles of other sciences. The axiom 
of geometry, for example, viz., two quantities equal 
to a third are equal to each other, is a particulariza- 
tion of the metaphysical axiom that two things 
identical to a third are equal to each other. 
It is philosophy also which furnishes physics 
and chemistry and all other sciences with the 
basic principles of experiment—the laws of 
the uniformity of nature, causality, end and 
determination. 

What was the Philosophy of Nature for St. 
Thomas? It was the application of the principles 
of metaphysics or philosophy (the third degree of 
abstraction) to the purely inductive sciences or 
sciences of observation, e.g., Physics (the first degree 
of abstraction). The phenomenal world furnished 
the matter, and Philosophy or Metaphysics the 


24 1, q. 86 art. 3. Philosophy of Nature was the combination of 
Physics and Metaphysics in the sense that while Physics alone studied 
ens sensibile, or was a science of observation, Philosophy of Nature 
put the accent on the evs and attempted to discover the reasons of being 
of the object. 


238 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


form, thus making Philosophy of Nature an induc- 
tive-deductive science. 

Two important conclusions can be drawn from 
this conception of the Philosophy of Nature, one 
having reference to the effect of a new scientific 
discovery on the Philosophy of Nature, the other 
having reference to a new Philosophy of Nature 
which has so recently come into being. 

What effect would an entirely new Physics have 
upon Philosophy of Nature? As a matter of fact 
there is a new Physics developing today, so new in 
its conception that it has brought about one of the 
most astounding crises in scientific thought since 
the days of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. The 
Newtonian physics has been found inadequate to 
translate the world of concrete fact in a way suitable 
to the intellect, and the physics of the last three 
centuries has been founded on what Professor 
Whitehead has called “the Fallacy of Misplaced 
Concreteness.” 

It is not for philosophers to dispute this state- 
ment. Professor Whitehead and Mr. Bertrand 
Russell are no mean authorities in the field of sci- 
ence, and their conclusions cannot be waived aside 
by the gesture of a hand. Taking due account of 
their statements that the Physics of the present day 
is “ biological” rather than mechanistic, a query 
naturally arises concerning its effect on the Phi- 
losophy of Nature. 

According to the Thomistic conception of science, 
the new Physics means only a new Physics, but not 


FALLACY OF UNIFORM METHOD 239 


a new Philosophy. Since the principles of phi- 
losophy were not based on the old physics they do 
not fall with it, and since the principles of philoso- 
phy are not based on the new physics they do not 
rise withit. The principle of identity, the principles 
of causality and finality, the transcendental proper- 
ties of being, the value of ideas, all of these remain 
what they are, independent of a new scientific con- 
struction. Physics is not the foundation of Philoso- 
phy but only a particularization of some of its prin- 
ciples — a particularization which is apt to be wrong 
because of the incomplete induction upon which it 
is based. That is why St. Thomas could repeat over 
and over again, in the texts we have quoted, that 
some day there might be a new physics and a new 
astronomy which would upset the old, but knowing 
this, he never concluded that philosophy must be 
revised for that very reason. Philosophy of Nature 
was the application of the principles of metaphysics 
to observed facts and phenomena of the universe; 
these facts might be wrong, they might be proved 
false, but that did not mean the metaphysics was 
wrong; it only meant that metaphysics had to be 
applied to anew set of observed facts. ‘Two and two 
still make four, though I observe two drops of water 
and two drops of water fuse into one. No one ever 
thought of plucking out his eye because he saw a 
stick bent in water. 

Why is it then that Professor Whitehead and 
others are so insistent that our whole Philosophy 
of Nature must be revamped because of the new 


240 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Physics? If a new Physics does not necessarily 
mean a new Philosophy, why is it so often stated 
among the leaders of this new scientific group 
that a new philosophy is necessary? Why is it 
that the recognized leaders of science are ex- 
pressing dissatisfaction not only with the old 
physics but even with the old philosophy? Why 
is it that they are no longer swinging from one 
extreme of the scientific pendulum to the other, but 
are questioning the very corner-stone of philosophy? 
Why, in their mind, does a new physics demand a 
new philosophy? 

It may seem paradoxical at very sight to say that 
the demands of the new science for a new philosophy 
are perfectly within the bounds of reason since we 
have already said that a new physics, in the Thom- 
istic conception, does not demand a new philosophy. 
But there is no contradiction, for the philosophy 
against which the new science 1s reacting 1s the 
Cartesian tradition of modern philosophy and not 
the Scholastic tradition of the philosophia perennis. 
What is the difference between the Thomistic con- 
ception of science and the Cartesian? ‘The differ- 
ence is this: Jn St. Thomas the third degree of 
abstraction is applied to the first, 1.e., metaphysics 
to observed facts of nature, in Descartes the com- 
bination was between the first and second degrees of 
abstraction, namely a mathematical physics, a sc1- 
ence materially physical but formally mathemati- 
cal. The new science of Descartes was something 
introduced between Natural Philosophy and Phys- 


FALLACY OF UNIFORM METHOD 241 


ics. Still continuing to concern itself with bodies of 
the material world, still continuing to adhere to 
objects furnished by the first degree of abstraction, 
it no longer regarded these things from the point of 
view of being (ens mobile) but from the point of 
view of mathematical quantity. The sound, estab- 
lished transcendental principles of the mind no 
longer illumine the observed facts of the laboratory 
or the microscope so as to give us a philosophy of 
nature; all that we have now is merely a physico- 
mathematical knowledge of nature. It is the im- 
perfect light of mathematical intelligibility and not 
the pure light of metaphysical intelligibility which 
illumines experimental physics. Hence it is that 
the great ideal of the modern philosopher is merely 
to translate the observed facts of nature and science 
in terms of algebraic and mathematical symbols. 
Witness in Einstein the transportation of time 
which properly belongs to physics, to the domain of 
mathematics where it does not properly belong. 
The mathematicization of time which he effected 
does tell us what the universe is in terms of mathe- 
matical relations, but not what the universe is in 
terms of its causes.” 


25 This does not mean to say that there is no place for mathematical 
physics. St. Thomas speaks of mathematical physics in the following 
lines: “Quanto scientia aliqua abstractiora et simpliciora considerat, 
tanto eius principia sunt magis applicabilia aliis scientiis; unde principia 
mathematice sunt applicabilia naturalibus, non autem e converso, propter 
quod physica est ex suppositione mathematice sed non e converso, ut 
patet in 111 Ceelo, In Lib, Beet. De Trinitate, q. 5 art. 3. ad 5. 
ad 6. Thus St. Thomas admits applying mathematics to physics, but 
not physics to mathematics, for this is a subversion of the order and 
hierarchy of sciences and right reason. Making time mathematical 


at re See SA ee aa 
: a kaa pea hati | 
op Sy tee ele 


242 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Now it follows that the reason Professor White- 
head is desirous of scrapping Philosophy of Nature 
is because by Philosophy of Nature he understands 
a Mathematical Physics, and since the mathemati- 
cal physics of the present day is entirely different 
from the day of Descartes, it follows that our phi- 
losophy likewise must be different. For Descartes 
the objective world was made up of spatial matter 
with simple location in space and time and subjected 
to very definite rules as to its locomotion. For our 
living scientists, substance and quality, “simple 
location ” and the like are antiquated notions. The 
latest thing in physics is the introduction of bio- 
logical categories into physics, which has given rise 
to Professor Whitehead’s peculiar theory that na- 
ture is organic rather than mechanistic. Here we 
are not deciding the merits of the mechanistic and 
organic view of nature; suffice it to say that Profes- 
sor Whitehead’s system has the merit of reintroduc- 
ing finality into the universe, and in the words of 
Professor Taylor: “takes us back in a very striking 
way to the ideas of the great men of the Christian 
Middle Ages and the great Greeks who lay behind 
them.””° Our point merely is that Professor 
Whitehead’s dissatisfaction with philosophy to the 
present time is a protest against the Cartesian tradi- 
tion and not against the Thomistic or the tradi- 
pau emunele oe such a subversion. Cf, Jacques Maritain, ‘ Philosophie 
Scolastique et Physique Mathematique,” Revue Thomiste, 1918-1919, 


Vols. 23 and 24, p. 164 ff. Also “ Philosophie et Science Experimentale,” 
Revue de Philosophie, Vol. 26, No. 4, 1926, p. 342 ff. 


26 “Dr, Whitehead’s Philosophy of Religion,® Dublin Review, 


July 1927, p. 28. 


FALLACY OF UNIFORM METHOD 243 


tional;” and that he is asking for another 
Mathematical Physics, or Biologico-Mathematical 
Physics, and not a new Philosophy. The Meta- 
physics of Aristotle and the Schoolmen is sound; 
new Physics does not affect even in the least its prin- 
ciples. If Philosophy of Nature at the present day 
were built on Thomistic lines, and the supreme 
truths of the intellectual order were the guides and 
the light which illumined the observed facts of 
nature, there would be no demand for a new Phi- 
losophy of Nature. If there is such a demand today 
it is because our thinkers are content with a mathe- 
matical or symbolic expression of nature’s laws 
instead of a metaphysical explanation, and because 
they are satisfied with a description in terms of 
algebra rather than an explanation in terms of 
causes. 


Ill. Application of These Conclusions to Religion. 


Empirical science, because it deals with matter, 
which is capable of a kind of infinite multiplication, 
must always be content to draw conclusions based 
on incomplete induction. Empirical science, on 
the admission of the leading scientists themselves is 
merely an approximation of truth, for science does 
not aim to explain, but merely to describe. Now 
if scientific constructions are tentative because they 
explain the facts today and probably not tomorrow, 
why overthrow the certain, the fixed and the estab- 
lished principles of natural reason and natural relig- 


27 “ Science and the Modern World,” pp. 71-82, 209, 210. 


244 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


ion out of tribute to these budding theories? It 
might well be asked whether the new physics is a 
stable and permanent foundation upon which to 
build the whole fabric of philosophy and religion. 
What guarantee have we that a philosophy built 
upon the theories of our day is likely to be more 
permanent than constructions built upon the scien- 
tific constructions of Descartes, Galileo and Kepler? 
We do not wish to be understood as asserting that 
the new theories are unsound (many would say 
they are), we are merely suggesting the idea that 
since scientists claim for their theories nothing more 
than a mere approximation of truth, there is always 
the danger that a philosophy built on something so 
insecure is more likely to be found on examination 
to possess no greater stability than the foundations 
upon which it has been constructed. 

The whole appeal of the new idea of religion is 
that it is in perfect accord with the latest findings of 
science. Professor Whitehead, so deservedly rec- 
ognized as a great scientist, has recently come for- 
ward in his “ Religion in the Making” to construct 
a religion on the new theories of science. If a theory 
quite as fragile as relativity is dubious for science, 
the field where it properly belongs, it does not seem 
reasonable to make it serve as religion’s all-suffi- 
cient foundation. There can be no doubt that it is 
the novelty in the application, and not the truth 
which appeals. It is not by bread alone that the 
modern philosopher of religion lives, but principally 
by catchwords. As a German writer puts it: “ We 


FALLACY OF UNIFORM METHOD 245 


are very resourceful in coining marketable and 
attractive formule, but idle in creating fully devel- 
oped systems and views of the world.” *” Professor 
Perry, bemoaning the same spirit in modern philoso- 
phy writes: “ We suffer from a new kind of credu- 
lity. It was once complained that men are too easily 
inclined to believe what their fathers believed; that 
men lacked originality, independence. But there 
is now reason to fear that men may too easily be- 
lieve what no one else has ever believed before. 
Men with settled convictions may become as rare 
as were freethinkers in an earlier time. And the 
consequences must be scarcely less detrimental to 
social welfare than the consequences of the earlier 
complacency and narrow-mindedness.” *” 

There is humility and there is prudence in the 
caution of scientists when they speak of their the- 
ories as hypotheses, but there is no humility and no 
prudence in the recklessness with which philoso- 
phers of religion apply these hypotheses to religion. 
Religion is not to be made the proving ground of 
every scientific hypothesis any more than the soul 
is to be made the puppet of every demand of the 
body. It is not wisdom, it is not common sense to 
overthrow the established relations between God 
and man, because of certain hypothetical relations 
between space and time. It is not good science, 
it is not good-philosophy, it is positively bad philoso- 
phy of religion, to make approximations, and uncer- 


28 Ludwig Stern, “ Die Philosophiscen Stromungen der Gegen- 
wart,” p. 7. 29 “ Present Philosophical Tendencies,” p. 20. 


246 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


tain explanations of the universe the reason for 
overthrowing the abiding and eternal relation of 
Sovereignty and Paternity which are the bonds 
uniting man to God. 

Up to this point we have assumed with the modern 
scientists themselves that their theories are only 
theories, that they are approaches to the truth rather 
than truth itself. Here we go a step further and 
grant that their theories are laws, and their hypoth- 
eses established truths. Would it then still follow 
that religion is to be constructed and interpreted 
in the light of these laws and these principles? The 
answer must be clearly in the negative, for what is 
certain in the empirical sciences is derived from the 
illumination afforded by the intellectual principles 
of metaphysics. Physics, biology, and sociology are 
not the ground and foundation of metaphysics; 
otherwise the science with a more restricted object 
would rule the science with a more general object. 
That is why St. Thomas asserts that a changed con- 
ception of empirical science does not involve a 
change in the metaphysics which ruled that science. 
Philosophy is independent of science, but independ- 
ent does not mean contrary to science, nor neces- 
sarily separated from science; the independence is 
founded on the difference of the how and the why, 
description in terms of mathematics and explana- 
tion in terms of causes. The difference is founded 
on an abstraction which reveals the reason of being 
of the juxtaposed phenomenal qualities. That is 
why the Angelic Doctrine contends that there is no 


FALLACY OF UNIFORM METHOD 247 


uniform method in science, viz., because the various 
sciences are separated by different abstractions, and 
each has its own material object and its own formal 
object. ‘To overflow one into the other so as to 
confuse abstractions and objects would be the ruina- 
tion of science.” — et propter hoc peccant qui uni- 
formiter in tribus speculative partibus procedere 
nituntur. 

St. Thomas calls that tendency to make all sci- 
ences uniform in method and content a “ sin,” 
and if there be a general academic “ sin” today it 
is precisely that. Here we call it the “ Fallacy of 
the Uniform Method of Science’ —the fallacy of 
taking one science as the norm, and making it the 
measure, the guide, the interpreter, and the inspira- 
tion of every other science. The history of philoso- 
phy bears witness that our own generation is not 
the first to build a metaphysics and a religion on the 
data of a science to the exclusion of all other possible 
foundations. There is a fashion in sciences as there 
is in clothes. Each generation seems to have its 
own science which is supreme for the moment. 
Auguste Comte gave to the world the sociological 
method which was genuinely scientific so long as 
it was confined to society. But the lyricizers of sci- 
ence would not keep it restricted to its material 
object; they overflowed it and applied the sociologi- 

80 In divinis neque ad sensum, neque ad imaginationem debemus 
deduci; in mathematicis autem et imaginationem et non ad sensum; 
in naturalibus autem etiam ad sensum. Et propter hoc peccant, qui 


uniformiter in tribus speculative partibus procedere nituntur. De 
Trinitate Beetii, q. 6 art. 2. 


248 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


cal method to religion and to God with the result 
that we have today the ingenious sociological inter- 
pretation of God as “society divinized.” Another 
generation saw the popularity of another science, 
viz., biology, which Darwin carried to new heights 
and new revelations of the development of the or- 
ganic world. Biology is a perfectly legitimate and 
necessary science so long as it remains biology and 
confines itself to the study of living beings, but 
Darwin and all the other biologists could not hold 
lyricizers in check, and soon biology was applied not 
only to philosophy as in the case of Herbert Spencer, 
but even to God, with the result that certain modern 
theologians look upon God as “the God of evolu- 
tion,” or the “ God who advances from life to life ” 
as in the case of Sir Henry Jones. Then came the 
new fashion—psychology. James and Meyers, 
confining themselves to a study of the subconscious 
mind, gave to the scientific world many interesting 
and important conclusions concerning the effect of 
sublimated ideas on our waking life. But the fal- 
lacy of the uniform method of science got the better 
of some psychologists who refused to make psychol- 
ogy a study of the mind and its states, but insisted 
on making religion and philosophy dance to its tune. 
Psychology then became identified with theology 
and conversion was explained as an eruption of a 
subsconscious state, sin was explained as a “com- 
plex,” and God as a “ mental projection ” as in the 
case of Professor Leuba, or as a “ sublimated 
libido” as in the case of the Freudian theologians. 


FALLACY OF UNIFORM METHOD 249 


At the present time the fashionable science is not 
sociology, not biology, not psychology, but physics. 
It is fashionable because the most important sci- | 
entific theories in the world today are coming from 
that field. Intellectual giants in that field like 
Duhem, Whitehead, Einstein, Poincaré and Meyer- 
son, have given to the world new interpretations 
of the physical universe which do seem to fit the 
facts better than the older theories. The thinking 
world welcomes these intellectual advances, but it 
cannot help but frown upon any attempt to inter- 
pret everything else in this world in terms of physics, 
a spatio-temporal continuum, and relativity. Pro- 
fessor Whitehead, although the deepest thinker 
among the physicists themselves, is also their great- 
est offender and their greatest lyricizer. After writ- 
ing such a delightful scientific work as “Science 
and the Modern World,” he follows it with a venture 
into theology in his “ Religion in the Making,” 
wherein he is destined to be set forth before the 
world as a sorry example of the truth that a man 
may be a really great scientist and a lamentably 
poor theologian. 

It is worth repeating here that we are not oppos- 
ing science but lyricism of science, not scientific 
methods, but a uniform scientific method for all 
departments of knowledge, not physics, but physics- 
religion. 

But there is a danger that this Thomistic or 
common-sense point of view — the two are synony- 
mous — may be open to the charge of obscurantism. 


250 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


This is because there is current in the world today 
the notion that religion is a controversial question, 
and that science is not. To dispute the extension 
of physics to the domain of religion is to be “ unsci- 
entific,” and yet to dispute the sacredness of estab- 
lished principles of religion is to be “broad” and 
“tolerant.” Disagreeing with science is considered 
as vicious as disagreeing with the multiplication 
table, but to disagree about religious fundamentals 
is like disagreeing with the World Court. The 
Thomistic point of view is not that science is unsci- 
entific, but merely that religion is “ unscientific ” in 
the sense that physics is not the science which best 
studies it. It is true, and may be said without 
offense, that as theologians, some of the modern 
lyricists of science are good physicists. 

The three principal sciences which have been lyri- 
cized into religion are psychology, sociology and 
physics, the latter being the most generally applied 
today. All modern philosophers have not fallen into 
this pit. We are glad to quote Professors Rashdall, 
Leighton, Thouless, among others who protest par- 
ticularly against psychology dominating religion. 
“The business of psychology is to tell us what actu- 
ally goes on in the mind. It cannot possibly tell us 
whether the beliefs are true or false — a man cannot 
be satisfied as to the truth of his beliefs simply by 
being told that the beliefs are actually there.” ™ 
“The idea of religion which is merely based upon 
psychology and involves nothing else is a delu- 

81 R. H. Rashdall, “‘ Philosophy and Religion,” 1909, pp. 111, 112. 


FALLACY OF UNIFORM METHOD 251 


sion.” ** “ A religion which does not tie the soul 


of man up with some permanent reality beyond the 
shows of sense is no religion. The denatured defini- 
tion of religion without a God-idea, which various 
writers have offered as a way out of the difficulties 
in squaring religion with materialism, does not 
correspond to any historical or actual working relig- 
ion.” * “ Psychology must supply us with the facts 
about the human mind and its experiences. ... It 
is then the task of the theologian to explain what 
kind of universe it is in which such experiences 
occur, 1.e., in the end to ask what God is like. But 
science must not beg the question before it asks 
theology to answer it because to begin to know how 
things are done, we cannot assume that God doesn’t 
do them.” ** 

One of the difficulties which will always confront 
the sociologist who attempts to interpret God in 
terms of social-science, will be the rebellion of a 
human heart against making a religion out of an 
irreligious humanity. If the individuals who make 
up society are God-less how can the combination of 
them produce the sacred object of religion, or even 
a God? ‘Ten thousand imperfect men do not make 
a saint, and neither can ten thousand God-denying 
individuals constitute a God Who is their collective 
ideation. The sociological explanation of religion 
will always be extrinsic to religion itself, will de- 


82H. Thouless, “Introduction to the Psychology of Religion,” 
1923, pp. 261, 262. Cf. W. Selbie, “ Psychology of Religion,” p. 297. 

83 J. A. Leighton, “ Man and the Cosmos,” p. 537. 

84 F. R. Barry, “ Christianity and Psychology,” 1923, p. 172. 


252 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


scribe it when it has been cooled off and poured into 
moulds, but never as a life which it really is. 

And even if the sociological method were capable 
of being applied uniformly to theology, its satisfac- 
tion would still be doubtful. As Mr. Chesterton 
has so well said: “Man is maimed as well as limited 
by arresting those upward gestures that are so 
naturaltohim. Evenif mankind could become such 
a mutual admiration society men would in fact find 
each other less admirable. A self-contained and 
self-centred humanity would chill as in the same 
way as a self-contained and self-centred individual. 
For the spiritual hungers of humanity are never 
merely hungers for humanity. In other words it 
is impossible to turn all the eyes of that mutual 
society inward.” * 

Furthermore, it will always be dubious as to how 
influential humanitarian religion really is. “ Did 
any man or woman — it may be asked with no in- 
tention of flippancy — ever worship God in spirit 
and in truth for the sake of providing the children 
of the poor with pasteurized milk, or in order to 
found homes for orphans? Did any man or woman 
indeed ever worship God in spirit and truth for the 
sake of making his neighbors across the street or 
next door more honest? A plain answer to this 
question puts the matter in a clear light. To any- 
one who has known religion even at a distance the 
question will seem perhaps more than absurd. The 


85 Introduction, O. Dudley’s “ Will Men Be Like Gods? ” 1925, 
p. VI. 


FALLACY OF UNIFORM METHOD 253 


truth is that a religious person may particularly 
express or give outward result to his religion through 
good works, even of an organized kind. He may 
thus, for instance, help to support ‘ fresh air homes ’ 
for city children, or more questionably, he may see 
to it that his neighbors do not disobey the prohibi- 
tion law or falsify their income-tax returns. But 
others may do the same thing from quite another 
motive, from simple good will or benevolence, from 
devotion to efficiency, from the itch which allows 
no rest to the meddlesome busybody. Good works 
then are not even certain evidence of religion, and 
are by so much the less religion itself. ... This 
means essentially that religion is not social activity 
at all, and that moreover, the very entrance way to 
religion is a deep conviction of the relative emptiness 
of the mutable things of this outward world... . 
Nothing worth having can be got through palpable 
misuse of words; and religion is a word whose right 
meaning has long since been definitely fixed. Self- 
deception is in fact the most innocent name one can 
give to attempts at the transference of a creditable 
name to secular activities however meritorious.” *° 
The method and content of one science is not the 
method of every other science; just as the subject 
or predicate of one sentence cannot be rashly 
transferred to another sentence, so neither can the 
categories of one science be transferred without 
correction to the categories of another science. 


86 Robert Shafer, ‘“‘ Progress and Science,” Yale Press, 1922, pp. 
25,26. 


254 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


“The roses are red ” is one sentence; “ the sphinx 
is silent ” is another. The predicate “ red ” cannot 
be applied to the subject “ sphinx ” without doing 
violence both to facts and language. In like man- 
ner, the method of astronomy cannot be the method 
of biology, nor can the categories of chemistry be 
transferred to sociology. Oxygen and hydrogen 
cannot be studied in the same way as Justice and 
Fortitude. It is one thing to be a relativist in phys- 
ics and another thing to be a relativist in theology. 
There is a danger that a scientific ideal, like rela- 
tivity, if it is isolated, is apt to go to one’s head. 
As an angry man sees everything “red,” so even 
a physicist may see everything “ relativized.” 

This lyricism has been carried so far that now we 
are content to'take our religion from anyone whether 
or not he be religious-minded. We would never 
call in a plumber because we had broken our finger- 
joint, nor would we call in a piano-tuner to fix the 
key of our door, nor a florist to heal a burn on the 
palm of our hand, but we will hear and hearken to 
anyone when the most important and the only im- 
portant question in the world is asked: namely, 
man’s relation to God. Professor A. E. Taylor, 
speaking in the same vein, says: “ No one would 
think of regarding the verdict of an archeologist or 
a chemist on a moot point of law as deriving any 
particular value from the eminence of the archzol- 
ogist or the chemist in his known subject; no one 
would attach any weight to a Lord Chancellor’s 
opinion about the genuineness of an alleged Rem- 
brandt, or a disputed fragment of Simonides, be- 


FALLACY OF UNIFORM METHOD 255 


cause the opinion was that of the best Lord 
Chancellor the country has ever possessed. We all 
understand that the sort of consensus of ‘ authori- 
ties ’ which makes it proper for the man who is not 
an ‘authority’ to dispense with his own private 
judgment is the consensus of ‘authorities’ in a 
particular subject, who derive their claim to author- 
ity from a native aptitude and long training. But 
we ought to be equally ready to recognize that in 
the same way the only consensus which is of weight 
on matters of religion is the consensus of deeply 
religious men. Religion is not shown to be an 
‘illusion’ because worldly-minded men who have 
never felt the sense of personal sin or the need of 
adoration can see nothing in it any more than, 
for example, the Theory of Relativity is shown to 
be ‘moonshine’ because it seems unintelligible to 
the type of man of whom R. L. S. used to speak 
as the ‘common banker,’ or disinterested devotion 
to be an illusion, because a clever cynical diplo- 
matist assures one that he has never felt such devo- 
tion himself and sees no evidence of it in the be- 
haviour of others... . Itis as though one should 
say there can be no gold in a certain district because 
I, who know little or nothing of the signs of the 
presence of this metal, and care less, have traversed 
the district from end to end without discovering 
what I had made no attempt to find.” ” 

The sciences are valid within their own sphere 
but only there, for a science is not the whole of all 


37 The Vindication of Religion, in “ Essays Catholic and Critical,” 
edited by E. G. Selwyn, 1926, pp. 40, 41. 


256° RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


knowledge but only a special kind of knowledge 
which makes up for its one-sidedness by the preci- 
sion of its vision. ‘The scientists themselves can 
tell us about the human brain, but always about the 


human brain as it is for the physiological or ana- 


tomical observer, who is looking at it from the out- 
side. “So long as we keep strictly to the method 
of the natural sciences we never penetrate, so to say, 
within our own skins.... But in truth the 
thought and deeds of men are not mere ‘ events’ 
but something more: they are personal acts. 
Hence, I submit, the information of the psychologist 
and the anthropologist is true and valuable so far 
as it goes, but it does not go far enough.” * 

Why, too, it may be asked, should the physics 
of relativity enjoy the exclusive privilege of re- 
interpreting God and religion? Have our ideas of 
God and religion been so closely built on a world of 
“simple location” and “point” and “atom” and 
“event” that the overthrow of these ideas means 
the overthrow of God? Because time and space are 
found to be physical ultimates, does it follow that 
God is Space-Time, or that Space is His Body and 
Time is His Soul as Professor Alexander would 
have us believe? Because the physical universe can 
be better interpreted in terms of the organism rather 
than that of mechanism, and in terms of “ events ” 
rather than location, does it follow that therefore 
God is the “ Harmony of these events,” as Professor 


88 The Vindication of Religion, in “ Essays Catholic and Critical,” 
edited by E. G. Selwyn, 1926, p. 43. 


FALLACY OF UNIFORM METHOD 257 
Whitehead would have it? Why should it be the 


kingly privilege of the new physics, any more than 
medicine or engineering, to interpret God in terms 
of its categories? Why should not the medical pro- 
fession be entitled to revise the concept of God to be 
in better keeping with insulin than with the quinine- 
stage of medicine? Why should not the Egyptolo- 
gist be entitled, by the same logic, to revise our 
concept of God, to be more in keeping with 
the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen? Be- 
cause life evolves does it follow that God 
evolves? Are the laws and hypotheses and cate- 
gories of one science transferable indefinitely 
to other sciences? If the laws of psychol- 
ogy are not applicable to astronomy, and the laws 
of music not transferable to law, and the predicates 
of an amceba not applicable to a Pantheon, why 
should the categories of physics, psychology and 
sociology be applicable to God? ‘There is far more 
reason, it is true, for applying biology to God than 
there is for applying chemistry or mineralogy, for 
the laws of biology are more universal than those of 
chemistry, because life is more universal than 
chemical elements. But the laws of organisms are 
no more applicable to the spirit than the laws of the 
chemical to the non-chemical, or the laws of the 
flesh to the spirit, or the laws of a protoplasm to 
God.” Briefly there is danger that the uniform 
method will be carried too far. Relativity is valid 
within its own order perhaps, but it becomes laugh- 
able when it states that we have six toes on one foot 
89 Sheen, “ God in Evolution,” Thought, March 1927, p. 581. 


258 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


counted one way, and four on the other counted the 
other way. The temporal and the spatial are not 
the best approaches to the non-temporal and the 
non-spatial. There is much necessity of us heark- 
ening back to the wisdom of Aquinas, to learn all 
over again that Metaphysics and not Physics is the 
science which properly studies God: “ Quedam vero 
sunt specuabilia que non dependent a materia se- 
cundum esse... id est, divina scientia vel meta- 
physica.” *° The standpoint of religion and 
metaphysics is more inclusive than the merely physi- 
cal one as being is more extensive than space-time. 
Man is greater than all his standpoints, and the real 
problem, as St. Thomas so well says, is to find the 
standpoint of the whole man and the whole uni- 
verse from which to judge the validity of all partial 
and subordinate views. On the contrary, there is 
something tragic in our modern philosophy of relig- 
ion. Much of it is intoxicated by modern physics ; 
space-time has gone to its head; whole cosmic 
streams of flux have swept it away from its moor- 
ings. Space-time has become a cult and Time a God 
and Physics a Revelation. Philosophers of religion 
breathlessly await the latest decree of space-time 
physics as industrialists await the latest design in 
machinery. And what food for thought! Sacred 
Scripture says “ There will be no more time.” Phi- 
losophers of religion today have constructed the uni- 
verse out of it — and even God! 


40 In De Trinitate Boetii, q. 5 art. 1. 


CHAPTER IX 
THE FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 


HE third fallacy of the contemporary idea 
of religion is the fallacy of inverted rela- 
tions. By this is meant that obtuse mental 

tendency to invert and turn upside down the nat- ' 
ural relation existing between knowledge and re- 
ality on the one hand, and God and man on the 
other. ‘The two are correlative, and since know- 
ledge is the pathway to God it follows that a wrong 
conception concerning knowledge entails eventually 
a wrong conception concerning God. The path that 
leads to Rome does not pass by Babylon. 

Traditional thought asserts first, that the human 
intellect is a thing measured not a measure, and the 
relation between the intellect and reality is that 
of a determinable thing to its determinant; sec- 
ondly, the Divine Intellect is a measure, not a thing 
measured, and the relation between God and things 
which are not God and distinct from Him, is one 
of dependence. The first principle asserts the 
proper relation between mind and things, the second 
between God and man.* 


1 Intellectus divinus est mensurans non mensuratus; res autem 
naturalis, mensurans et mensuratus; set intellectus noster est mensura- 
tus, non mensurans quidem res naturales, sed artificiales tantum. De 
Veritate, q. 1 art. 2. In sentiendo et sciendo mensuramur per res que 
extra nos sunt. In Met. lib. ro. lect. 23 1. q. 21 art. 2; q. 16 art. 13 
1-2 q. 93 art. 1 ad 3. 

259 


260 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


I. Relation Between Things and the 
Human Intellect 


The human intellect 1s a determined or measured 
thing, not a measure, — such is the Scholastic posi- 
tion. No faculty completely determines its object. 
The eye, for example, does not create color; the ear 
does not create sounds nor impose sound on what it 
hears; the sense of touch does not communicate 
sensation to the object, it cannot make thorns feel 
like roses. The same is true of the intellect; it does 
not determine reality or create it by imposing space 
and time forms on sensible experience, or intellect- 
ual knowledge. Rather, it is determined by reality 
and in this sense is measured by it. Reality does 
not need to enter into a finite mind in order to exist 
or to find its true being. Hence there is no real 
relation between reality and mind. Concepts are 
not true on account of the intellect, but because they 
conform to reality. The intellect does not endow 
things with being, nor goodness, nor truth—it 
discovers them. It is only in the case of artistic 
creation that man is a measure; the sculptor, for 
example, determines the statue he chisels. To this 
extent man resembles God as Creator. 

This conception of the relation between mind and 
reality has the great advantage of corresponding to 
common sense. Kant, it is true, effected a Coperni- 
can revolution in philosophy by making reality re- 
volve about mind, instead of mind about reality. 
What Kant really did was to apply the principle of 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 261 


independence and freedom from the “ extrinsic,” 
introduced in the sixteenth century, to the realm of 
philosophy. He asserted the liberty or license of 
the mind against reality in the same way that others 
before him asserted the liberty of conscience against 
the mystic Christ. Traditional thought began by 
humbly acknowledging the mind’s primitive poverty 
and asserting the necessity of something extrinsic 
to measure and determine it. Once it humbled it- 
self it became exalted, “ for he that humbleth himself 
shall be exalted,” and thanks to the spiritual power 
of the soul it rose above matter to a knowledge of 
supra-sensible things. 

Contemporary thinking, on the contrary, denies 
this relation between intellect and things. It in- 
verts the relation and asserts that the human intel- 
lect 1s a measure and not a thing measured. Itisa 
measure, because it determines and is, to some 
extent, the source of the great metaphysical tran- 
scendentals, — being, truth, goodness, and we may 
add, beauty. 

The Human Mind as the Measure of Being: Con- 
temporary thought whether idealistic or empirical 
agrees on the Kantian revolution that reality is in 
some way the work of the mind.” The mind meas- 
ures being either by creating a priori forms native 
to the mind — and this is the Idealist’s answer; or 
by practical forms arising from need and utility — 


2 A happy reaction is to be found in Neo-Realism of the present 
day. It is unfortunate however that this philosophy has not been more 
metaphysical. Cf. R. Kremer, “ Neo-Realisme Americain,” Louvain, 
1921. 


262 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


and this is the Empiricist’s answer. One is the 
modern interpretation of the First Critique of 
Kant, the other of the Second Critique.® 

The Human Mind as the Measure of Truth: Its 
source is not something transcendent to man; it be- 
comes as man becomes. There is no such thing as 
a Truth “ with a big ‘T.’”* Truths “ make them- 
selves as wego.” ‘They are “ so many new creations 
that add themselves as fast as history proceeds.” 
Instead of being an “‘ antecedent principle” that 
animates a process, truth is but an abstract name 
for its results.” Being devices, the measure of truth 
will be its utility — its utility to us in handling the 
facts of experience. Subjective interests, our needs, 
our desires will be at every step the measures of these 
“truths.”° ‘The measure will not be something ob- 
jective, it will be that which satisfies us, or that 
which is expedient in the way of our thinking. If 
an idea “ works” then it is true. “If theological 
ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they 
will be true for pragmatism in the sense that they 
are good for so much.”* “If the hypothesis of 
God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the 
word — experience shows that it certainly does 
work — it is true.” ° 

The Human Mind as the Measure of Goodness: 

3 Leslie Walker, “ Theories of Knowledge.” A fuller treatment 
of this point is found in “‘ God and Intelligence.” 

* James, “ Pragmatism,” p. 242. 

5 Tbid. 

6 F.C. S. Schiller, “ Humanism,” p. 11. 


© Pragmatism,” p.'73. 
8 [bid., p. 299. 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 263 


The common-sense Philosophy takes as a more or 
less proximate guide of morality the conformity 
with the ultimate natural end of man. St. Thomas 
commenting on Aristotle’s Ethics tells us “ the rec- 
titude of the appetite in respect to the end is the 
measure of truth in the practical order.”’ Every 
man by his nature 1s equipped with a norm for his 
actions. This measure is naturally known and 
in demonstrable first principles which are the seeds 
of moral virtues.**. They form the major proposi- 
tion in judging the morality of an act, the particu- 
lar act under consideration constituting its minor. 
But these first principles which are the measure 
of morality have a source by which they are meas- 
ured. ‘Their ultimate source is outside man since 
every measure must be extrinsic to the thing meas- 
ured. That ultimate source is God, “Who 
enlightens every man coming into the world.” * 
The first principles of the practical reason are sufli- 
cient to explain the moral acts of man, but they are 
not sufficient to explain themselves. There is noth- 
ing either in man as an individual or in man as 
a social animal which will give the final answer to 
question. Their source is without; it is God. 
Contemporary thought, on the contrary, has seen 
fit to reject this interpretation of the ultimate 
source of the bonum. The basis of morality is to 


® Rectitudo appetitus per respectum ad finem est mensura verita- 
tis in ratione practica. Ethicorum Lib. VI, lect. 2. 

10 In Eth. Lib. V, lect. 12, De Veritate, q. 16 art. 1. Summa 
72°99. 63 art. 1; 

11 Commentary on the Gospel of St. John Chap. 1, verse: “ Erat 
lux vera.” 


264 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


be sought ultimately within man himself. There 
is no need of God standing outside and apart from 
man. ‘There are no fixed and indemonstrable first 
principles which are the “seeds” of morality. 
Morality is a growth; it is an evolving thing. Evo- 
lution accounts for it. Its source is man. The 
source of the moral is the non-moral; the source 
of the ethical is the non-ethical. 

For the general purpose of simply indicating the 
spirit of modern thought it suffices to divide the 
modern notions of the goodness into two great 
divisions : 

1. Those which seek the origin and the measure of mo- 
rality in the individual. 

2. Those which seek the origin and measure of morality 


in society, implying that society is a source distinct from 
man as an individual. 


According to the first conception, morality is 
the result of association. In the course of the bio- 
logical evolution of man, certain stability has at- 
tached itself to certain feelings of pleasure or pain. 
Those actions which gave pleasure became asso- 
ciated with the good and those actions which gave 
pain became associated with the bad. There were 
no “seeds” of morality in the mind of man; if there 
were any “seeds” of morality at all, they were in 
his body. The study of biological and psychologi- 
cal development would reveal the moral develop- 
ment. 

This theory soon passes into the theory of the 
Sociological Origin of Morality. Man being a 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 265 


member of society it is only natural to relate his 
acts to it. The Sociological School of Durkheim- 
Levy Bruhl is the popular exponent of the notion 
that society is the measure of morality. Society 
is considered as a distinct and totally different real- 
ity from the individuals which compose it. It is 
sui generis, and is not merely a different mode of 
being from the individuals who compose it. The 
measure of morality, this school argues, cannot 
come from the individuals, for no individual can 
measure himself; it cannot come from God, for this 
is an unscientific hypothesis. It must therefore 
come from society.” And Society is God, “ Je ne 
vois dans la divinité que la societé transfigurée et 
pensée symboliquement.” * 

Another manifestation of the anthropometric at- 
titude of modern thought is to be found in its the- 
ories of esthetics. Its conception of what consti- 
tutes beauty is in complete variance with that of 
traditional thought on the subject. For the latter 
Beauty is essentially a Divine thing; it belongs to 
God. In creating He gave it in a measured way 
to His creatures. The Beauty of creatures is noth- 
ing else than the Divine Beauty participated by 
things. St. Thomas thus carries his theory of AAs- 
thetics to a point which no other theory has even 
remotely approached. He places Beauty in the 
very Trinity itself —in the Son Who is the image 

12 Cf, Simon Deploige, “Le Conflit de la Morale et de la Soci- 
ologie,” for an exposé and criticism of this theory. 


18 FE, Durkheim, Bulletin de la Societé Francaise de Philosophie, 
T. VI, p. 129, quoted in Deploige. 


266 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


and splendor of the Father.* As Creation measures 
the beauty in nature by the Word, so does the 
artist, another creator, as it were, measure the 
beauty of his work. Beauty then is really outside 
him as well as inside. 

The modern estheticians on the contrary are 
inclined to exaggerate the role of impression in art 
and eventually to deny the necessity of an other by 
which Beauty is measured. 

(a) The Symbolic Sympathy Theory made cur- 
rent by Basch and Lalo* maintains that Beauty is 
not in the work; it is not something inherent in the 
object and measured by a mind which conceives 
beauty. Rather, it is the state of consciousness 
which is beautiful. We project our sentimental 
states into the objects which surround us; by some 
mysterious extension of our sentimental states we 
project our emotions in the things outside us. 
Once this endowment has taken place there 
arises a sympathetic fusion and the notion of 
beauty rises. The source of beauty is lifted from 
the domain of the intellect and lowered to the field 
of the sensibilities. Its ultimate source is not there- 
fore something by which man is measured. Man is 
its source inasmuch as he has lived through a cer- 
tain sentimental state and projected that state out- 
side himself. 

(b) A second form of anthropometric esthetics 
is a development of the anthropometric sociology. 


14 Summa 1. q. 39 art. 8. 

15 Basch, “Les Grands Courants de l’Esthetique Allemande Con- 
temporaine,” Revue Philosophique, 1912. C. Lalo, “Les Sentiments 
Esthetiques,” 1910. 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 267 


According to this theory moral values come from 
society. The development of this man-as-source 
philosophy in the field of esthetics gives rise to 
the theory that beauty too has but a social value. 
M. Lalo* in exposing this notion declares that a 
work of art is beautiful only in proportion as it is 
recognized as such by society. With this theory, 
as with the previous one, man is the source of 
beauty, but man considered from the point of view 
of sociology and not from the point of view of psy- 
chology. 

(c) Pragmatic Esthetics is a particular aspect 
of a pragmatic philosophy. According to this 
philosophy, truth is subject to the fluctuations of 
human valuations. In like manner beauty is de- 
livered over to the non-intellectual valuations and 
appreciations of man, and beauty becomes synony- 
mous with a pleasurable reaction which it engen- 
ders within me.” 

The Measure of Beauty then is wholly from 
within. Man is the measure of Beauty in its en- 
tirety; all that which might justly be considered as 
a measure of his art, is considered by him as a limi- 
tation and an attempt to crush out all individuality 
and originality.” 

76 Revue Philosophique, July 1914, p. 47. 

17 These systems are given in detail in “L’Oeuvre d’Art et la 
Beauté,” Maurice De Wulf, 1922. 

— Tague. Maritain, “L’Art et Scholastique,” Chap. 2. Cf. 
“ Belphegor” Julien Benda, Paris, 1919, p. 26. “La volonté de la 
peinture moderne de repousser tout element intellectuel se traduit encore 
dans une autre series de doctrines, dont l’intention, a travers les milles 
gloses qu’on en donne peut se resumer d’un mot; susciter |’impression 


que nous recevons des choses hors de la signification que notre esprit 
leur donnes. 


268 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


The result has been a glorification of the subjec- 
tive states of the artist and the birth of the cult of 
the indistinct. The indistinct is not a mere nega- 
tive term. It has a positive signification for them. — 
Bergson has written on the “ Idea of Disorder ” in 
his Creative Evolution. The painter, the musician, 
seeks not to describe a burning house either on can- 
vas or in sounds but rather to describe how he felt 
in seeing the house burn. There can therefore be 
no measure of beauty other than the subjective state 
itself. It is a sensation taken for a perception and 
every sensation is incommunicable. Only ideas are 
communicable. In a certain sense therefore it is 
true to say that every public recital of “‘ subjective 
music” and every public exhibition of a modernist 
picture is a refutation of the philosophy behind it. 
It seeks to communicate to others what is, ex- 
hypothesi incommunicable — viz., the subjective 
state. | 

In making man or the human mind the measure 
of being, truth, goodness and beauty, contemporary 
thought has attributed to the human mind precisely 
what St. Thomas and his followers have attributed 
to the Divine Mind.” Dr. James H. Ryan has more 
clearly expressed this thought in these words: 
“ Kant at least never confused human with divine 
psychology. But his successors, including the lead- 
ing neo-idealists of the present day, Croce and 
Gentile, did and have continued to do so. The 
effect of this confusion of thought upon epistemol- 


19 De Veritate, q. 1 art. 2. 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 269 


ogy has been marked, for it has resulted in the 
substitution of a theory of Absolute Mind and its 
knowledge for that of the human mind and its know- 
ledge. Epistemology has thus become a theory of 
knowledge in utter abstraction from our ordinary 
modes of thought.” * God is the Source, the Meas- 
ure, of all Being, Truth, Goodness and Beauty 
according to traditional thought. Tomake man the 
source is to divinize man. ‘The Thomistic concep- 
tion tended to the elevation of the material universe 
through man’s spiritual soul which ennobled things 
by knowing them. The present day conception is 
not concerned with the elevation of the material but 
with the divinization of man. 

A metaphysical revolution which makes man a 
tyrant over nature instead of its benefactor may 
not seem to the superficial observer to have any re- 
ligious implications ; but really it has, for the divini- 
zation of man implies necessarily the humanization 
of God, and ultimately the humanization of all 
religion. There is a necessary connection between 
the exaltation of man and the humiliation of God. 
This alteration is not in the objective order, it is 
true, any more than there is an alteration in a public 
dignitary when an insane mind imagines himself 
to be such. God is God, though Baal call himself 
God. But subjectively there is a profound relation 
between the two. Just as two material bodies can- 
not occupy the same space at the same time, neither 


20 «The Approach to the Problem of Knowledge,’ New Scho- 
lasticism, Vol. 2, No. 1, Jan. 1927, p. 27. 


270 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


can magnified finitude exist with dwarfed infinity. 
“IT must decrease; He must increase” expresses a 
relative truth which extends quite beyond the con- 
fines of the Jordan as a place and the first century 
as atime. The bigger a philosopher thinks he is, 
the less he thinks God is. The psychology of 
sainthood brings out this truth. The closer souls 
mount to God the less assured they are of their own 
importance, and the more certain they are of their 
own imperfection and nothingness.” ‘The reason 
for this is that as we get near the perfect and the 
infinite, the more clearly the defects of imperfect 
and the finite show forth, just as the closer we bring 
an object to the light the more its imperfections and 
defects are revealed. The contrary is equally true: 
the more a man exalts himself, the less God seems to — 
him in comparison. The good man is never sure he 
is good because he measures himself by the Perfect ; 
the evil man is quite sure he is good because he 
measures himself by himself. A mole hill may look 
like a mountain to an ant, but it looks like a mole 
hill to man. Humility —philosophical humility 
—is the condition of wonder and the one fact 
which makes fairy tales interesting. As Jack could 
never have delighted in the bean-stalk unless Jack 
was smaller than the bean-stalk, so neither can 
philosophers enjoy this universe if they are bigger 
than the universe, neither can they enjoy God if 
they are bigger than God. 


21 Quanto enim aliquis magis afficitur ad Deum et ipsum cognoscit, 
tanto videt eum majorem; et se minorem immo prope nihil in com- 
paratione ad Deum. In Ephes. 5 lect. 7. 


See ee ee 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 271 
Il. Relation Between Man and God 


An error in the relation between mind and reality 
involves an error in the relation between man and 
God. The inversion of the due order of the one 
leads to an inversion of the due order of the other. 
But what is the due order between man and his 
Maker? First of all there is some kind of relation; 
that much is implied in the very question. Rela- 
tion signifies some kind of dependence between 
terms.** In the ultimate analysis there may be 
three kinds of relations accordingly as the terms 


are: both logical, or both real, or mixed, that is 


logical and real. The relation between a genus and 
a species is an example of a logical relation; the re- 


_ lation between a father and a son is an example of 


a real relation which implies a distinct substance 
and a real dependence on that substance.” But 
there is yet another kind of relation which is not 
wholly logical, nor wholly real, but mixed; that 
is when one of the terms is real and the other is 
logical. The real relation is to be placed in the 
dependent term. For example, the right side of 
a pillar is, properly speaking, not in the pillar it- 
self, but in its relation to man. The right or the 
left side of a pillar depends on man and not on 
the pillar, hence the real relation is to be placed 
in the man and not in the pillar.” 


22 C. G. lib. 2. c. 12; De Veritate, q. 21 art. 1; De Potentia q. 7 
art. 1 ad 9g. 

23 3. q. 13 a. 7. Cf. E. A. Pace, The Idea of Order, New Scho- 
lasticism, Jan. 1928. 

24 Quandocumque aliqua duo sic habent ad invicem, quod unum 


272 + RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


The relation between knowledge and reality, or 


intellect and things, belongs to this third class, for 
one of its terms is real, the other logical. The 
reality of things does not depend upon a finite 
knowing mind, but the knowledge of reality does 
depend upon reality. The relation between knowl- 
edge and the real external world is real, for with- 
out the raw materials of the sense world we would 
never know; but the relation between the external 
world and human knowledge is logical, for the ex- 
ternal world would continue to exist whether or not 
a finite mind ever knew it. We do not endow it 
with existence, we do not make it real, any more 
than geology makes the strata of the earth.” 

This opens up the heart of the question. St. 
Thomas asserts that there is the same relation be- 
tween man and God as there is between knowledge 
and reality. That means that the relation is real 


dependet ab altero, sed non e converse, in eo quod dependet ab altero, 
est realis relatio; sed in eo a quo dependet, non est relatio nisi rationis 
tantum; prout, scilicet, non potest intelligi aliquid referri ad alterum 
quin intelligatur etiam respectus oppositus ex parte alterius. De 
Veritate, q. 4 art. 6. Unde Philosophus dicit in 5 Meta., quod non 
dicuntur relative, eo quod ipsa referantur ad alia, sed quia alia refe- 
runtur ad ipsa. 1. q. 13 art. 73 1. q. 28 art. 1 and art. 2; d. 20 art. 1; 
d. 26 q. 2 art. 13; De Veritate, q. 1 art. 5 ad 16, 

25 Sicut scibile relative dicitur ad scientiam, non quia ad ipsum 
referatur, sed quia scientia refertur ad ipsum. 1 q. 6 art. 2 ad 1; 1 q. 
13 art. 7; 3. q. 35 art. 5 ad 3; 1d. 8 q. 4 art. 1 ad 33 1d. 20 q. 13 1 d. 
26 q. 2 art. 1; 1 d. 30 q. 1 art. 2 and q. 3 art. 3; 1 d. 40 q. 1 art. 1 ad 
2; C. G. lib. 2 c. 12; De Veritate, q. 1 art. 5 ad 15; q. 4 art. 5; in 
Meta. lib. 5 lect. 17; in Meta. lib. 10. lect. 8; in Phy. lib. 5 lect. 3.; 
Relatio enim scientiz ad scibile consequitur actionem scientis, non autem 
actionem scibilis; scibile enim eodem modo se habet quantum in se est, 
et quando intelligitur et quando non intelligitur; et ideo relatio in 
sciente realiter est, in scibili autem secundum intellectum tantum; 
dicitur enim quod intelligitur scibile ad scientiam relative, ex eo quod 
scientia refertur ad ipsum C, G. lib. 4. c. 14. 


Pie ee 
7a 
i v z 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 273 


in us but logical in God, just as the relation in 
knowledge is real in the human mind but logical in 
things.”° 

“Since God is outside the whole order of crea- 
tion and since all creatures are ordained to Him 
_and not conversely, it is manifest that creatures are 
really related to God Himself.” ‘This is the doc- 
trine of Aquinas and the doctrine of all who have 
followed the tradition of common sense. It is 
founded on the elementary truth that since nothing 
can come from nothing, there must be some Being 
to account for the participated being which is com- 
mon to all things in this universe.”* If there was 
ever a moment when there was nothing, then noth- 
ing would ever be. Things have not the plenitude 
of being; the very fact that they change, that they 
share this being with others, that they die, proves 
that their existence is but a borrowed thing and 
not their own. Just as the rays of the setting sun 
cease with the setting of the sun, so too would 
the imperfect rays of being in this world cease 
to exist unless there was a Being Who sustained 
and Who gave them existence. ‘This relation be- 
tween man and God is not the same as between 
the architect and the house; the house can con- 
tinue to exist long after the architect has passed 
away, for the architect is only the cause of the be- 
coming df the house and not its being. Without a 
Supreme Being as the Ground and the Cause of im- 


26 Comparatur igitur Deus ad alia entia sicut scibile ad scientiam 
nostram quod ejus mensura est. C. G. lib. 2. c. 12. 
emer ait 7. 8" C.G, lib, 2c. 15. 


274. RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


perfect being in this world, the human mind would 
necessarily be driven to the absurd conclusion that 
that which has. not within itself the reason of its 
own existence, has within itself the reason of its 
existence —a manifest denial of the principle of 
contradiction. And it is into this absurdity that 
everyone must fall who denies the principle of 
causality, for causality is not founded on an addi- 
tion of experiences, nor upon reflection on volun- 
tary movements, nor is it a postulate; it is founded 
on being and is related to the first principles of 
thought —the principle of identity and the prin- 
ciple of contradiction. 

Modern philosophy of religion considers the 
world as given, without any reason for its being 
given. Certainly if it is given, it must have been 
given by someone. To say it is eternal does not do 
away with the necessity of accounting for a Creator, 
for the chronological problem has nothing whatever 
to do with the ontological one. There is too often a 
confusion between spatially imagining creation and 
intelligibly understanding it. The understanding 
of creation depends on a knowledge of such distinct- 
ness between imagination and intellect. The uni- 
verse may be running a Marathon as far as the 
clock is concerned, but even though it did exist 
from all eternity (which we know from Revelation 
is not the case) it would still be eternally insufficient 
to account for its own existence. In other words, 
it would be eternally dependent on God. The intel- 
lectual attitude in the face of the universe is not: 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 27 


the world began, therefore some one made it; but 
rather, the world exists, and since it has not within 
itself the reason for its existence it must be depend- 
ent ona Being Who made it. “ We cannot possibly 
conceive a passage from not-being to being, as the 
Greeks phrased it, or from potential to actual exist- 
ence, except through the operation of some energy 
which is already actual, before the process in ques- 
tion begins, and adequate to produce every result 
in which such a process may ultimately issue. We 
can conceive actual being giving rise to contingent 
being, however unable we are to trace the mode of 
the occurrence. But to reverse the process, and to 
speak as if the totality of actual being had been 
gradually evolved, is to use words that convey no 
shadow of meaning, it is literally to talk nonsense. 
If, therefore, we employ the term universe to signify 
the sum-total of all being, we can conceive develop- 
ment within the universe but never of the universe. 
And this does not mean that such a process may 
have taken place, though we cannot picture it; but 
that, if the laws of human thought are valid, such a 
process cannot possibly have taken place.” ” 

A second subterfuge to escape the real relation 
between man and the universe and God is that of 
evolution. The fault here is that evolution is taken 
as an explanation, whereas it is only a description. 
Evolution is a perfectly sound hypothesis to account 
for the how of things, providing it does not ask us 
to believe that the greater comes from the less. But 


29 J. R. Illingworth, “ The Doctrine of the Trinity,” 1909, p. 8. 


276 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


the how things happen is quite a distinct problem 
from the why they happen. To describe a watch as 
machine made or to describe it as hand made, would 
explain the how of the process, but there would still 
be room for the question, Who made it? So too 
with the universe. ‘‘ Evolution involves no funda- 
mental issue. It clashes with no theology or phi- 
losophy. . . . Evolution simply means continuous 
growth; a tree growing from a seedling is an ex- 
ample of evolution ; growth is the universal phenom- 
enon apparent in ourselves and all organic life 
around us, and to discover it generalized is no shock, 
but rather an extension of the obvious.” *° Evolu- 
tion is one of the possible methods of creation. The 
problem of the evolution or the antiquity of the 
world has nothing to do with its origin. Some phi- 
losophers believe that. Evolution is a problem of 
the before and after; creation is a problem of the 
above. Evolution is concerned with relations in a 
circle; creation is a tangential problem. If there 
is evolution, there is then a double reason for the 
existence of God, because God must be postulated, 
first as the Source of being as being (God, Creator) ; 
secondly, as Source of being inasmuch as it is in 
evolution (God, First Mover); and thirdly, as 
Cause of the order according to which the world 
evolves —that is the intelligibility which it ex- 
presses and the ends which it realizes (God, Word; 
God, Alpha and Omega; God, Beginning and End). 
The problems of evolution, then, or the antiquity 


80 Hilaire Belloc, “A Companion to H. G. Wells’ ‘Outline of 
History,’ ? 1926, ps) 43. ‘ 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 277 


of the world has nothing to do with its origin. 
Some believe that to speak in terms of millions 
of years gives them a right to dispense with 
a Creator. This is much like saying that if the 
crank of an automobile is long enough it will be 
a self-starter. An old race horse does not cease to 
be an old race horse because it runs slow, neither 
does the universe cease to be a dependent universe 
because it has taken centuries to unfold itself. And 
this opens up the problem of God and the depend- 
ence of man and the universe on God from Whom 
they hold their being. 

Creation is not the sum of two moments, one of 
labor, the next of rest. Creation is not a change; 
it is a relation. St. Thomas on this point says: 
“* Creation is not change, except according to a mode 
of understanding. For change means that some- 
thing should be different now from what it was 
previously. But in creation, by which the whole 
substance of the thing is produced, the same thing 
can be taken as different now and before only 
according to our way of understanding, so that a 
thing is understood first as not existing at all, and 
afterwards as existing. But as act and potency 
coincide as to the substance of motion and differ 
only according to diverse relations (Phys. ii1., text. 
20, 21) it must follow that when motion is with- 
drawn only diverse relations remain in the Creator 
and in the creature.” * 


31 1, q. 45 art. 2 ad 2 and ad 3. Inter esse autem, et non esse que 
sunt quasi extrema creationis, non potest esse aliquod medium; igitur 
non est ibi aliqua successio. C. G. lib. 2 c. 19. Creatis nihil est aliud 


278 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


*‘ Since therefore God is outside the whole order 
of creation, and all creatures are ordained to Him, 
and not conversely, it is manifest that creatures are 
really related to God Himself; whereas in God 
there is no real relation to creatures but a relation 
only in the idea, inasmuch as creatures are referred 
to Him.” *” In other words there is the same mental 
relation existing between God and man as there is 
between reality and mind, or between an object 
and its science.** Reality can exist independently of 
its entrance into a finite mind. The existence of the 
trees, the flowers and the birds does not wait upon 
my knowledge of them ; chemicals do not depend for 
their existence upon the science of chemistry — in- 
deed, if they did, they would not have come into 
existence before Lavoisier; plants can exist inde- 
pendently of the science of botany; animals can 
exist without the science of zodlogy; the earth can 
exist without geology ; so too can God exist without 
man. No cause is dependent on its effect; the 
potter does not depend for his being on the clay, nor 
the sculptor on his marble. Creation added nothing 
to God. Therefore there could be no dependence on 
created things as far as He is concerned. Suppose 
there were only one man in the world who possessed 
knowledge. Knowledge would then be qualitatively 
and quantitatively one. Now suppose other beings 
came into existence, so that this learned man could 


quam relatis quedam ad Deum cum novitate essendi. De Pot. 
q. 3 art. 4. 

Oe TS ep ra ate 

83 Comparatur igitur Deus ad alia entia sicut scibile ad scientiam 
nostram quod ejus mensura est. C. G. lib. 2 ¢. 12. 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 279 


communicate his knowledge. What would be the 
result? Knowledge would increase quantitatively, 
and instead of there being only one man who knows, 
there would be thousands. But qualitatively the 
knowledge would remain the same; there would be 
no more knowledge, qualitatively speaking, in the 
world than before. So too in Creation, there was an 
increase of being extensively, but not intensively. 
God was no richer after it than before. ‘There were 
more beings in the world after creation than before, 
but there was no more Being; there were more beau- 
tiful things but no more Beauty; there were more 
true things, but no more Truth; there were more 
good things, but no more Goodness. Before crea- 
tion there was no such thing as “ having;” there 
was only Being, creation introducing that word 
“have” into the world to denote participation. 
God gained nothing, for He is Gain; God lost 
nothing, for He no more communicated His sub- 
stance to this world in making it than a hand 
communicates its substance to the wax when it 
leaves its impression therein. 

But this conception of the relation between Cre- 
ator and creature is rejected in up-to-date philoso- 
phy of religion. Once the true relation between 
reality and mind is distorted, it is but a short step 
to the distortion of the relation between God and 
man. What Kant effected in the criteriological 
order his successors have accomplished in the theo- 
logical order. In other words the present day relig- 
ious attitude inverts the due order of things, and 
asserts there is only a logical relation between man 


280 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


and God, but a real relation between God and man. 
This 1s what is meant by the Fallacy of Inverted 
Relations. | 

Minds that have been used to thinking in a 
common-sense fashion will always find it difficult 
to understand how a philosopher can say that God 
depends on man or man’s universe. But the diffi- 
culty does not alter the fact that such is contem- 
porary teaching. God depends on man and man’s 
universe — such in simple terms is the new religion 
as advocated by some of its exponents. The ex- 
planation given in favor of such an inversion is gen- 
erally three-fold: philosophical, psychological, and 
sociological; ** philosopical inasmuch as God is a 
“ budding off of the evolving universe ” ; psychologi- 
cal, inasmuch as God is a “mental projection” 
sociological, inasmuch as God is “society divi- 
nized.” A few quotations from contemporary phi- 
losophies of religion attest the prevalence of the 
view that God depends on us either individually or 
collectively: 

“We also help to maintain and sustain the nature 
of God and are not merely his subjects. . . . God 
himself is involved in our acts and their issues, or 
as was put above, not only does he matter to us, but 
we matter to him. .. . He is in the strictest sense 
not acreator butacreature.” “ Deity owes its being 
to pre-existing finites with their empirical quate 
and is their outcome.” * 


84’ See) Chaps 1: 
85 §. Alexander, “Space, Time and Deity,” Vol. 2, pp. 388, 


398, 399- 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 281 


“ He began to be with the slow coalescence of the 
superior sentients of a world system.” ** “ And 
since God is a society of finite sentients and finite 
sentients are each and all evolved, the evolution 
of God is seen to be the compensation for that cor- 
ruption of eternity in which the world process be- 
gan.” * “ He buds off from the Divine Imaginal.” * 

God is “ developing through the co-operative con- 
tributions (conscious and unconscious) of all crea- 
tures.” 

* Apart from the actual world with its creativity 
there would be no ideal vision which constitutes 
Csod.” 40 

“God Himself, in short, may draw vital strength 
and increase of very being from our fidelity.” * 

Note too that in the majority of definitions of 
religion it is not God, but the universe with which 
man is in relation.” Religion no longer means an 
ordination to a Creator, but an outlook on crea- 
tures ; it no longer implies friendliness with God but 
friendliness with the cosmos: “Is the cosmos 
friendly to my ideals? ” 

There are others who believe that God is not the 
product of an evolving universe, in which case God 
depends on the universe, but rather that God is the 


36 D. W. Fawcett, “ Divine Imagining,” p. 223. 

Pink hia:, De 22: 

38 D. W. Fawcett, “Imaginism and the World’s Process,” Mind, 
April 1922, p. 168. 

39 H. A. Overstreet, God and the Common Will, Hibbert Journal, 
Vol. XIII, No. 1, p. 155. 

40 A. N. Whitehead, “ Religion in the Making,” p. 150. 

41 W. James, “Is Life Worth Living?” pp. 24-28. 

Chap). 


282 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


product of the human mind —in other words, its 


fiction. This was the import of the psychological — 


explanations of religion, e.g., that of Professor 
Leuba, who believes “it difficult to estimate the 
harm done by the conviction that for its ethical 
improvement society is dependent upon a personal 
God.” 43 

Finally, God is dependent on man, not psycholo- 
logically, but socially. To speak of a God Who is 
Supreme irritates, and in the words of one of the ex- 
ponents of the sociological origin of God, “ it smacks 
of the adoration or flattery, such as was formerly 
given to tyrants and despots.” “* The same senti- 
ments are expressed by Professor Charles A. EIl- 
wood for whom God means nothing more than 
Man. “And since service of God is in reality 
service of man, there will be sin in this new 


religion of democracy; it will be a failure to serve 


mankind.” ** Professor Overstreet puts it still 
more boldly and lets it be known that “God is 
ourselves.” *° 

Whatever be the particular presentation the com- 
mon ground of all seems to be that God is man, and 
man is God. ‘The very false connotation given to 
words with fixed meanings, such as “God” and 
“religion,” is sufficient to condemn such theories. 
Certainly if ““God” means anything, He does not 
mean either a “ quality” or a “‘ creature.” 


43 “ Psychology of Religious Mysticism,” p. 329. 

44 EF. S. Ames, “ The New Orthodoxy,” 1925, p. 117. 

£00 Phe Reconstruction of Religion,” pp. 139, 143. 

46 “ The Democratic Conception of God,” Hibbert Journal, Vol. 
XI, p. 140. 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 283 


But this is not the sole reason for expressing dis- 
content with such novelties. The very systems 
which give birth to these are themselves self- 
refuting. Take for example the Italian school for 
whom religion is nothing more than man contem- 
plating his own spirit idealized, or admiring him- 
self in the mirror of his own reflective acts. God 
then becomes the object taken apart from its 
relation to the subject, i.e., the subject’s self- 
annihilation. Such is the theory of Croce. Gentile’s 
theory on the contrary believes Religion to be the 
subject’s affirmation of the object as infinite and 
absolute. 

The different expressions matter little; in the 
ultimate analysis God and religion are constructions 
of the human mind, not objective, but subjective. 
God, on such a theory, depends on our knowing 
Him. If religion is nothing more than the moment 
of absolute objectivity in the eternal cycle of the 
spirit’s activity, then we are face to face with an 
inexorable dilemma. Either the subject really and 
completely denies himself and loses himself in the 
object (and in such a case there cannot be for him 
any resurrection, and human history should have 
come to ‘an end long ago) or the subject survives 
and consequently survives as knowing the object 
and capable of knowing any number of objects. 
In the latter case the idea of God as Absolute and 
Infinite object which according to this theory comes 
only through the subject’s self-annihilation, could 
never arise at all. Such a system has been rightly 


284 | RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


called by one who understands it, “‘ the apotheosis of 
self-assertion.” *" 

Professor Otto, in his work “The Holy” is not 
nearly so guilty of the Fallacy of Inverted Relations. 
There is nothing in his work which directly asserts 
that God is a mental projection, but there is much 
suggestion that God is nothing distinct from man’s 
*“‘ sense of the holy.” Nowhere has he made clear 
the distinction between mere stimuli of the faculty of 
divination and the veritable manifestation of the 
numinous. The most he will say is that “ the numi- 
nous is felt as objective and outside self.” ** This 
comes very close to identifying the feeling of the — 
Holy with the Holy, and the feeling of Overpower- 
ingness with Power. Certainly, since he excludes 
the rational element entirely, there is left no crite- 
rion for judging between feelings. To exclude the 
rational is to exclude ground for objectivity, for 
feelings by themselves are essentially incommuni- 
cable. I can communicate a truth but not a 
toothache. It is this tendency to make the non- 
rational fundamental which exposes Professor Otto 
to identifying God with the sentiment of God. Itis 
one thing to say that the universe justifies us in 
speaking of God; it is another thing to say God is 
the non-rational element in reality Who cannot be 
the object of rational thought.” 


47 Angelo Crispi, “* Actual Idealism,” Hibbert Journal, Vol. XXIV, 
No. 2, p. 259. Cf. Angelo Crispi, “Contemporary Thought of Italy,” 
1926, passim, 

way HOS 

49 Leonard Hodgson, “The Place of Reason in Christian Apolo- 
getics,” 1925, p. 20. 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 285 


The system of Professor S. Alexander, in which 
God is a “ quality ” emerging from an evolving uni- 
verse, is also subject to rather embarrassing objec- 
tions. His system opens not with the Johannine 
evangel, “In the beginning was the Word,” but 
rather with the tidings of new physics: “‘ In the be- 
ginning was Space-Time.” ‘These two standing in 
close relation to each other is all he has to begin 
with. One props up the other, thus making a very 
insecure foundation for a universe. Professor J. S. 
Mackenzie” says: “It looks as if we began with 
pure emptiness.” But Professor Alexander con- 
tends that time is not empty, since it contains space; 
and space is not empty since it contains time. This 
reminds one too much of the famous islanders who 
earned a precarious living by taking in one another’s 
washing. It would seem that the real filling of the 
spatio-temporal system is supplied by the qualities 
that occur in them and that evolve from the most 
simple to the most complex types. But if we start 
from pure space-time it is hard to see where all 
these admirable qualities are to come from. Here 
we are reminded somewhat forcibly of Carlyle’s 
remark that the making of the universe raises the 
same sort of question as that which one of the 
Georges found in the making of a dumpling — 
“how the apples got in.” Professor Alexander 
indeed says quite frankly that “ quality is the great 
mystery,” but as qualities appear to be the only con- 
crete things that exist within his scheme a theory 


50 “ Ultimate Values,” 1926, p. 34. 


286 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


that leaves their existence a mystery can hardly be 
accounted very satisfactory. 

Professor Alexander’s whole system depends on 
the rejection of two elementary facts of experience, 
viz., there can never be a movement without a thing 
that moves, and secondly, the greater can never come 
from the less. Denying the first he imagines a 
motion without a mover as the source of things, from 
which motion Space-Time is analyzed. By the 
denial of the second he imagines that Space-Time 
will go on producing higher and higher qualities 
from something lower and lacking these qualities. 

Finally, what must be said of a system in which 
“* Deity owes its being to pre-existing finites ” and in 
which God is a creature? And what is said here 
may be applied equally to all “ God-producing phi- 
losophies.” Either such a God is greater or less than 
man. If He is greater than man then the greater 
comes from the less, which is absurd; if He is less 
than man, then He is not a God but a puppet and a 
travesty on a name. 

Language loses its meaning when we call black 
white; religion a libido; God a creature; and man 
acreator. A material civilization does not confuse 
dollars with cents, pounds with shillings; on these 
matters it is intolerant. Two dollars and two dol- 
lars make four dollars and not three, and no amount 
of pleading for monetary tolerance could change the 
truth. But, on the all important matter of the Ulti- 
mate Ground of the Universe, the Final End of 
Man, the meaning of God and religion, there is a 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 287 


tolerance stretched to the point of the absurd. Ulti- 
mately the confusion of dollars and cents will not 
affect mankind so vitally, will not make for his weal 
or woe so potently and quickly, as a confusion of the 
due relations between God and man. And if our 
intellectual vision were keen enough we would real- 
ize that it is not debits and credits, budgets and 
armaments, balances of trade and elevation of guns 
that make this world a fit place to live in, but rather 
a humble and profound knowledge that God is our 
Master, our Lord and our all. ‘“ Unless the Lord 
build the city they labor in vain who build it.” 

To make God the outcome of the cosmic forces, 
the projection of a mind, or the symbol of society, 
in a word, to make God dependent on things is 
to build a religion without God. It means to pro- 
ceed from religion to God, instead of from God to 
religion. Such is the fundamental difference be- 
tween the philosophia perennis and the new spirit 
of the day. And this is but one of the many phases 
of the fallacy of inverted relations. In the domain of 
revealed religion, the modern procedure is to go 
from faith to Christ, instead of from Christ to faith. 
It is Christ Who is the Ground of faith and God Who 
is the Reason of religion, and to invert this order 
is to create a situation as difficult to imagine as a 
circumference without an equi-distant relation from 
acentre. To say that God is the product of religion, 
and not its Ground or Reason, is equivalent to say- 
ing that matter is a product of physics; that life is 
the product of biology and that without science life 


288 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


could not exist; that man is the product of anthro- 


pology; that animals are begotten of zodlogy, and 
plants of botany, and the insane of pathology. 
What rare wisdom there was in Aquinas to insist 
that a misunderstanding of the relation of an object 
to its science, entails a misunderstanding in the 
relation of God to man! As a mind cannot create 
reality, as the stomach cannot create its food, so 
neither can man make God. 

“Ye will be like unto God” is a prophecy from 
Eden that is being fulfilled in so much contemporary 
thinking. It is no longer man who is made to the 
image and likeness of God, but God Who is made 
to the image and likeness of man. There are two 
ways of denying God: One 1s to say with the atheist: 
“ There 1s no God”; the other is to say: “I believe 
in God,” but God is “ creature,” or “ Space-Time.” 
“ Any philosophy which misrepresents God, which 
demonstrates Him as other than He is, which posi- 
tively denies Him those things which are proper 
to Him, or positively affirms of Him that which can- 
not stand with His nature, may, in a very true and 
real sense, be said to abolish God, and to exclude the 
notion of God from the realm of truth wherein phi- 
losophers are at home.” The denial of God either 
explicitly or implicitly, the denial of the primacy of 
the spiritual, is to contradict the epitome of individ- 
ual and historical experience, namely, we are not 
“‘ God-makers ” but “ God-made.” It may have the 
appearance of a novelty which so often solicits a 


51 J. Leycester King, “Reason, Not Sentiment,” Month, May, 
1927, P. 385. 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 281 


“ He began to be with the slow coalescence of the 
superior sentients of a world system.”* “ And 
since God is a society of finite sentients and finite 
sentients are each and all evolved, the evolution 
of God is seen to be the compensation for that cor- 
ruption of eternity in which the world process be- 
gan.” * “ He buds off from the Divine Imaginal.” * 

God is “ developing through the co-operative con- 
tributions (conscious and unconscious) of all crea- 
tures: *” 

* Apart from the actual world with its creativity 
there would be no ideal vision which constitutes 
God.” 40 

“God Himself, in short, may draw vital strength 
and increase of very being from our fidelity.” * 

Note too that in the majority of definitions of 
religion it is not God, but the universe with which 
man is in felation.*” Religion no longer means an 
ordination to a Creator, but an outlook on crea- 
tures ; it no longer implies friendliness with God but 
friendliness with the cosmos: “Is the cosmos 
friendly to my ideals? ” 

There are others who believe that God is not the 
product of an evolving universe, in which case God 
depends on the universe, but rather that God is the 


86 D. W. Faweett, “ Divine Imagining,” p. 223. 

Pi pid., p.-22. 

38 D. W. Fawcett, “‘Imaginism and the World’s Process,” Mind, 
April 1922, p. 168. 

39 H. A. Overstreet, God and the Common Will, Hibbert Journal, 
Vol. XIII, No. 1, p. 155. 

40 A. N. Whitehead, “ Religion in the Making,” p. 150. 

41 W. James, “Is Life Worth Living?” pp. 24-28. 

Chan 1. 


282 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


product of the human mind —in other words, its 
fiction. This was the import of the psychological 
explanations of religion, e.g., that of Professor 
Leuba, who believes “it difficult to estimate the 
harm done by the conviction that for its ethical 
improvement society is dependent upon a personal 
(56d? 43 

Finally, God is dependent on man, not psycholo- 
logically, but socially. To speak of a God Who is 
Supreme irritates, and in the words of one of the ex- 
ponents of the sociological origin of God, “ it smacks 
of the adoration or flattery, such as was formerly 
given to tyrants and despots.” * ‘The same senti- 
ments are expressed by Professor Charles A. EII- 
wood for whom God means nothing more than 
Man. “And since service of God is in reality 
service of man, there will be sin in this new 
religion of democracy; it will be a failure to serve 
mankind.” ** Professor Overstreet puts it still 
more boldly and lets it be known that “God is 
ourselves.” *° 

Whatever be the particular presentation the com- 
mon ground of all seems to be that God is man, and 
man is God. The very false connotation given to 
words with fixed meanings, such as “God” and 
“religion,” is sufficient to condemn such theories. 
Certainly if “God” means anything, He does not 
mean either a “quality” or a “‘ creature.” 


43 “ Psychology of Religious Mysticism,” p. 329. 

44 E. S. Ames, “ The New Orthodoxy,” 1925, p. Ref 

biatany © Reconstruction of Religion,” pp. 139, 

46 «The Democratic Conception of God,” Hibbert ee Vol. 
XI, p. 140. 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 283 


But this is not the sole reason for expressing dis- 
content with such novelties. The very systems 
which give birth to these are themselves self- 
refuting. Take for example the Italian school for 
whom religion is nothing more than man contem- 
plating his own spirit idealized, or admiring him- 
self in the mirror of his own reflective acts. God 
then becomes the object taken apart from its 
relation to the subject, i.e., the subject’s self- 
annihilation. Such is the theory of Croce. Gentile’s 
theory on the contrary believes Religion to be the 
subject’s affirmation of the object as infinite and 
absolute. 

The different expressions matter little; in the 
ultimate analysis God and religion are constructions 
of the human mind, not objective, but subjective. 
God, on such a theory, depends on our knowing 
Him. If religion is nothing more than the moment 
of absolute objectivity in the eternal cycle of the 
spirit’s activity, then we are face to face with an 
inexorable dilemma. FE ither the subject really and 
completely denies himself and loses himself in the 
object (and in such a case there cannot be for him 
any resurrection, and human history should have 
come to an end long ago) or the subject survives 
and consequently survives as knowing the object 
and capable of knowing any number of objects. 
In the latter case the idea of God as Absolute and 
Infinite object which according to this theory comes 
only through the subject’s self-annihilation, could 
never arise at all. Such a system has been rightly 


284 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


called by one who understands it, “ the apotheosis of 
self-assertion.” *” 

Professor Otto, in his work “ The Holy” is not 
nearly so guilty of the Fallacy of Inverted Relations. 
There is nothing in his work which directly asserts 
that God is a mental projection, but there is much 
suggestion that God is nothing distinct from man’s 
“sense of the holy.” Nowhere has he made clear 
the distinction between mere stimuli of the faculty of 
divination and the veritable manifestation of the 
numinous. The most he will say is that “ the numi- 
nous is felt as objective and outside self.” ** ‘This 
comes very close to identifying the feeling of the 
Holy with the Holy, and the feeling of Overpower- 


ingness with Power. Certainly, since he excludes — 


the rational element entirely, there is left no crite- 
rion for judging between feelings. To exclude the 
rational is to exclude ground for objectivity, for 
feelings by themselves are essentially incommuni- 
cable. I can communicate a truth but not a 
toothache. It is this tendency to make the non- 


rational fundamental which exposes Professor Otto. 


to identifying God with the sentiment of God. It is 
one thing to say that the universe justifies us in 
speaking of God; it is another thing to say God is 


the non-rational element in reality Who cannot be 


the object of rational thought.” 


47 Angelo Crispi, “ Actual Idealism,” Hibbert Journal, Vol. XXIV, 
No. 2, p. 259. Cf. Angelo Crispi, “ Contemporary Thought of Italy,” 
habe. passim, 

8 Pa 

49 Leonard Hodgson, “The Place of Reason in Christian Apolo- 

getics,” 1925, p. 20. 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 277 


of the world has nothing to do with its origin. 
Some believe that to speak in terms of millions 
of years gives them a right to dispense with 
a Creator. This is much like saying that if the 
crank of an automobile is long enough it will be 
a self-starter. An old race horse does not cease to 
be an old race horse because it runs slow, neither 
does the universe cease to be a dependent universe 
because it has taken centuries to unfold itself. And 
this opens up the problem of God and the depend- 
ence of man and the universe on God from Whom 
they hold their being. 

Creation is not the sum of two moments, one of 
labor, the next of rest. Creation is not a change; 
it is a relation. St. Thomas on this point says: 
“* Creation is not change, except according to a mode 
of understanding. For change means that some- 
thing should be different now from what it was 
previously. But in creation, by which the whole 
substance of the thing is produced, the same thing 
can be taken as different now and before only 
according to our way of understanding, so that a 
thing is understood first as not existing at all, and 
afterwards as existing. But as act and potency 
coincide as to the substance of motion and differ 
only according to diverse relations (Phys. ii1., text. 
20, 21) it must follow that when motion is with- 
drawn only diverse relations remain in the Creator 
and in the creature.” * 


81 3. q. 45 art. 2 ad 2 and ad 3. Inter esse autem, et non esse que 
sunt quasi extrema creationis, non potest esse aliquod medium; igitur 
non est ibi aliqua successio. C. G. lib. 2 c. 19. Creatis nihil est aliud 


278 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


“‘ Since therefore God is outside the whole order 
of creation, and all creatures are ordained to Him, 
and not conversely, it is manifest that creatures are 
really related to God Himself; whereas in God 
there is no real relation to creatures but a relation 
only in the idea, inasmuch as creatures are referred 
to Him.” * In other words there is the same mental 
relation existing between God and man as there is 
between reality and mind, or between an object 
andits science.*’ Reality can exist independently of 
its entrance into a finite mind. The existence of the 
trees, the flowers and the birds does not wait upon 
my knowledge of them; chemicals do not depend for 
their existence upon the science of chemistry — in- 
deed, if they did, they would not have come into 
existence before Lavoisier; plants can exist inde- 
pendently of the science of botany; animals can 
exist without the science of zodlogy; the earth can 
exist without geology; so too can God exist without 
man. No cause is dependent on its effect; the 
potter does not depend for his being on the clay, nor 
the sculptor on his marble. Creation added nothing 
to God. Therefore there could be no dependence on 
created things as far as He is concerned. Suppose 
there were only one man in the world who possessed 
knowledge. Knowledge would then be qualitatively 
and quantitatively one. Now suppose other beings 
came into existence, so that this learned man could 


quam relatis quedam ad Deum cum novitate essendi. De Pot. 
mG arts 4s 

Se Ti rs arte, 

83 Comparatur igitur Deus ad alia entia sicut scibile ad scientiam 
nostram quod ejus mensura est. C. G. lib. 2 c. 12. 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 279 


communicate his knowledge. What would be the 
result? Knowledge would increase quantitatively, 
and instead of there being only one man who knows, 
there would be thousands. But qualitatively the 
knowledge would remain the same; there would be 
no more knowledge, qualitatively speaking, in the 
world than before. So too in Creation, there was an 
increase of being extensively, but not intensively. 
God was no richer after it than before. There were 
more beings in the world after creation than before, 
but there was no more Being; there were more beau- 
tiful things but no more Beauty; there were more 
true things, but no more Truth; there were more 
good things, but no more Goodness. Before crea- 
tion there waseno such thing as “ having; ” there 
was only Being, creation introducing that word 
“have” into the world to denote participation. 
God gained nothing, for He is Gain; God lost 
nothing, for He no more communicated His sub- 
stance to this world in making it than a hand 
communicates its substance to the wax when it 
leaves its impression therein. 

But this conception of the relation between Cre- 
ator and creature is rejected in up-to-date philoso- 
phy of religion. Once the true relation between 
reality and mind is distorted, it is but a short step 
to the distortion of the relation between God and 
man. What Kant effected in the criteriological 
order his successors have accomplished in the theo- 
logical order. In other words the present day relig- 
tous attitude inverts the due order of things, and 
asserts there is only a logical relation between man 


280 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


and God, but a real relation between God and man. 
This 1s what 1s meant by the Fallacy of Inverted 
Relations. 

Minds that have been used to thinking in a 
common-sense fashion will always find it difficult 
to understand how a philosopher can say that God 
depends on man or man’s universe. But the diffi- 
culty does not alter the fact that such is contem- 
porary teaching. God depends on man and man’s 
universe — such in simple terms is the new religion 
as advocated by some of its exponents. The ex- 
planation given in favor of such an inversion is gen- 
erally three-fold: philosophical, psychological, and 
sociological; ** philosopical inasmuch as God is a 
“ budding off of the evolving universe ” ; psychologi- 
cal, inasmuch as God is a “mental projection ”; 
sociological, inasmuch as God is “society divi- 
nized.” A few quotations from contemporary phi- 
losophies of religion attest the prevalence of the 
view that God depends on us either individually or 
collectively : 

“We also help to maintain and sustain the nature 
of God and are not merely his subjects. . . . God 
himself is involved in our acts and their issues, or 
as was put above, not only does he matter to us, but 
we matter to him. . .. He is in the strictest sense 
not acreator butacreature.” “ Deity owes its being 
to pre-existing finites with their empirical qualities 
and is their outcome.” * 


*% See Chap. 7. 
85 §. Alexander, “Space, Time and Deity,” Vol. 2, pp. 388, 


398, 399- 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 273 


in us but logical in God, just as the relation in 
knowledge is real in the human mind but logical in 
things.” 

“Since God is outside the whole order of crea- 
tion and since all creatures are ordained to Him 
and not conversely, it is manifest that creatures are 
really related to God Himself.” *’ This is the doc- 
trine of Aquinas and the doctrine of all who have 
followed the tradition of common sense. It is 
founded on the elementary truth that since nothing 
can come from nothing, there must be some Being 
to account for the participated being which is com- 
mon to all things in this universe.” If there was 
ever a moment when there was nothing, then noth- 
ing would ever be. Things have not the plenitude 
of being; the very fact that they change, that they 
share this being with others, that they die, proves 
that their existence is but a borrowed thing and 
not their own. Just as the rays of the setting sun 
cease with the setting of the sun, so too would 
the imperfect rays of being in this world cease 
to exist unless there was a Being Who sustained 
and Who gave them existence. This relation be- 
tween man and God is not the same as between 
the architect and the house; the house can con- 
tinue to exist long after the architect has passed 
away, for the architect is only the cause of the be- 
coming of the house and not its being. Without a 
Supreme Being as the Ground and the Cause of im- 


26 Comparatur igitur Deus ad alia entia sicut scibile ad scientiam 
nostram quod ejus mensura est. C. G. lib. 2. c. 12. 
measure ar, 7.) 9) CG, libs 2c. 15. 


274. RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


perfect being in this world, the human mind would 
necessarily be driven to the absurd conclusion that 
that which has not within itself the reason of its 
own existence, has within itself the reason of its 
existence—a manifest denial of the principle of 
contradiction. And it is into this absurdity that 
everyone must fall who denies the principle of 
causality, for causality is not founded on an addi- 
tion of experiences, nor upon reflection on volun- 
tary movements, nor is it a postulate; it is founded 
on being and is related to the first principles of 
thought —the principle of identity and the prin- 
ciple of contradiction. 

Modern philosophy of religion considers the 
world as given, without any reason for its being 
given. Certainly if it is given, it must have been 
given by someone. To say it is eternal does not do 
away with the necessity of accounting for a Creator, 
for the chronological problem has nothing whatever 
to do with the ontological one. There is too often a 
confusion between spatially imagining creation and 
intelligibly understanding it. The understanding 
of creation depends on a knowledge of such distinct- 
ness between imagination and intellect. The uni- 
verse may be running a Marathon as far as the 
clock is concerned, but even though it did exist 
from all eternity (which we know from Revelation 
is not the case) it would still be eternally insufficient 
to account for its own existence. In other words, 
it would be eternally dependent on God. The intel- 
lectual attitude in the face of the universe is not: 


FALLACY OF INVERTED RELATIONS 27s 


the world began, therefore some one made it; but 
rather, the world exists, and since tt has not within 
itself the reason for its existence it must be depend- 
ent ona Being Who made it. “ We cannot possibly 
conceive a passage from not-being to being, as the 
Greeks phrased it, or from potential to actual exist- 
ence, except through the operation of some energy 
which is already actual, before the process in ques- 
tion begins, and adequate to produce every result 
in which such a process may ultimately issue. We 
can conceive actual being giving rise to contingent 
being, however unable we are to trace the mode of 
the occurrence. But to reverse the process, and to 
speak as if the totality of actual being had been 
gradually evolved, is to use words that convey no 
shadow of meaning, it is litérally to talk nonsense. 
If, therefore, we employ the term universe to signify 
the sum-total of all being, we can conceive develop- 
ment within the universe but never of the universe. 
And this does not mean that such a process may 
have taken place, though we cannot picture it; but 
that, if the laws of human thought are valid, such a 
process cannot possibly have taken place.” * 

A second subterfuge to escape the real relation 
between man and the universe and God is that of 
evolution. The fault here is that evolution is taken 
as an explanation, whereas it is only a description. 
Evolution is a perfectly sound hypothesis to account 
for the how of things, providing it does not ask us 
to believe that the greater comes from the less. But 


29 J. R. Illingworth, “ The Doctrine of the Trinity,” 1909, p. 8. 


276 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


the how things happen is quite a distinct problem 
from the why they happen. To describe a watch as 
machine made or to describe it as hand made, would 
explain the how of the process, but there would still 
be room for the question, Who made it? So too 
with the universe. ‘‘ Evolution involves no funda- 
mental issue. It clashes with no theology or phi- 
losophy. . . . Evolution simply means continuous 
growth; a tree growing from a seedling is an ex- 
ample of evolution; growth is the universal phenom- 
enon apparent in ourselves and all organic life 
around us, and to discover it generalized is no shock, 
but rather an extension of the obvious.” * Evolu- 
tion is one of the possible methods of creation. The 
problem of the evolution or the antiquity of the 
world has nothing to do with its origin. Some phi- 
losophers believe that. Evolution is a problem of 
the before and after; creation is a problem of the 
above. Evolution is concerned with relations in a 
circle; creation is a tangential problem. If there 
is evolution, there is then a double reason for the 
existence of God, because God must be postulated, 
first as the Source of being as being (God, Creator) ; 
secondly, as Source of being inasmuch as it is in 
evolution (God, First Mover); and thirdly, as 
Cause of the order according to which the world 
evolves —that is the intelligibility which it ex- 
presses and the ends which it realizes (God, Word; 


God, Alpha and Omega; God, Beginning and End). 


The problems of evolution, then, or the antiquity 


80 Hilaire Belloc, “A Companion to H. G. Wells’ ‘Outline of 
History,’ ” 1926, p. 12. 


RELIGION AND VALUES 305 


philosophy of Aquinas makes man the center of this 
universe, but does not fall into the error of making 
man the only thing in the universe incapable of 
being perfected. 

What is meant by the term “sacramental phi- 
losophy ”? A sacrament is any material thing used 
by us as a means of spiritual sanctification. In 
the strict theological sense of the term, there are 
seven sacraments, each and every one of them being 
a sign instituted by Christ for the conferring of Di- 
vine Life on the souls of men. But in the broad 
meaning of the term, everything in this world may be 
regarded as a sacrament in the sense that every 
material thing is a means, an instrument, a stepping- 
stone, a scaffolding, a ladder to the spiritual, the 
infinite, the eternal. Now, the whole sacramental 
character of this philosophy can be reduced to the 
following proposition: everything in the universe 
centres about man and was made for man, but man 
was made for God.” Hence, everything in this 
world has a value for man inasmuch as it is a means 
to the attainment of His ultimate end Who is God. 
Because things have values and are not perma- 
nent abiding goods in an Eternal City, they are 
but earthly sacraments leading us on to absolute 
perfection. 

Everything on this earth has been made for man. 
As the servant serves the master, so in the great 
hierarchy of creation that which is lower serves that 


Moaod.2t ast, 1 ad 3; q. 47, art. 3; q. 103 art. 2 ad'3. C.G., Lib, 
1. c. 78; lib. 3. c. 98; 1 d. 44 q. 2; De Veritate, q. 5 art. 1 ad 3; 
De Potentia, q. 5 art. 4 ad 2; q. 7 art. 9. 


306 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


which is higher.** The various elements, hydrogen, 


oxygen, and the like, serve plant life. If the clouds 
refuse to send down their benediction of rain, if 
the sun would rebel against serving the plants with 
its light, it would not be long until plant life would 
perish from the earth. Just as chemical elements 
serve plants and are necessary for their life, so do 
plants serve animals, and animals serve men. And 
these lower things serve man not only as minister- 
ing to his needs, as affording subsistence for his life, 
but even as offering him the raw material of knowl- 
edge, and the starting-point for a study of great 
spiritual realities.’ 

The universe thus presents the spectacle of a great 
pyramid at the base of which are minerals and 
chemicals, and at the peak of which is man. Life 
grows in intensity and in immanence as the pyramid 
mounts up through the kingdom of plants and ani- 
mals until finally it is crowned with the superior 
life of man, a life which is not merely vegetative or 
sensitive but intellectual.** It is in virtue of this 
superior kind of life that man exercises dominion 
over all lower creatures. For man is not guilty of 
murder when he plucks up the plant for his food, 
nor when he serves the flesh of an animal at table, 

16 Creature ignobiliores sunt propter nobiliores sicut creature, que 
sunt infra hominem, sunt propter hominem. I. q. 65 art. 2; C. G., lib. 
2.C. 42; De Veritate, q. 27 art. 7 ad 43 1. q. 21 art. 1 ad 3, 

17 Vel ad intellectus perfectionem, quas in eis veritatem speculatur; 
vel ad suz virtutis executionem; et scientiz explicationem ad modum, 
quo artifex explicat artis sue conceptionem in materia corporali; vel 


etiam ad corporis sustentationem, quod est unitum anime intellectuali. 
C. G., lib. 3. © 112: 18 C. GG, lib, 476, 1k 


RELIGION AND VALUES 307 


though it can be said of him that he is destroying 
life. He is the master of these lower creatures. 
They were made for him, are necessary for his exist- 
ence, and he may use them as he sees fit. 

The progress of man, and, in a certain sense, the 
very progress of this universe consists in the gradual 
domination of all things by man. Uncontrolled and 
unharnessed natural forces never make for progress 
any more than uncontrolled social forces make for 
peace. Domination consists in the unification of 
forces, and the more man succeeds in conquering 
and domesticating the wild untamed forces of 
nature, the more he has progressed and the more 
the universe has progressed with him. ‘Thus, the 
more complex of our recent discoveries and inven- 
tions have been due to the unifying of distinct and 
separate discoveries in varigus fields. In other 
words, progress does not mean contempt of the 
traditional, neither does it mean the novel or the 
changing of standards with every succeeding age. 
Logically understood, progress can only mean, in 
relation to the universe, the gradual unification of 
all natures, forces and powers under the kingship 
of man. 

But how is this unification to be effected? How 
is this progress of the universe to be brought about? 
It can be brought about effectively only by a faculty 
which is destined by its very nature to serve the 
process of the unification of the forces of nature, and 
that is the human intellect. Man is ordained to 
the perfection of the universe, and is a very essential 


308 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


part of its perfection, because he possesses the power 
of intellect which nothing below him possesses, and 
which must be said to differentiate him from things 
more powerful than himself. The intellect is 
spiritual, and being spiritual is capable of knowing 
all things. Unlike other faculties it is not limited 
in its object. The eye is limited to color, the ear 
to sound, but the intellect is capable of knowing 
not only that which is colored, or audible, or tan- 
gible and material, but everything that is. And 
this is the reason why, according to St. Thomas, the 
intellect has a greater affinity for the whole universe 
than any other faculty with a more limited object. 
Since the intellect can embrace all being, God has 
wonderfully subjected all things to it. As the uni- 
verse contains all things materially, so the intellect, 
says a commentator of St. Thomas, contains all 
real things intentionally.” The physical constitu- 
tion of man sums up all the orders below him. He 
possesses the existence of the stone, the life of the 
plant, the sentiency of the animal, but in addition 
to these, man has his own peculiar intellectual per- 


19 Homo ordinatur ad perfectionem universi ut essentialis pars ipsius, 
cum in homine sit aliquid, quod non continetur virtute nec in elementis, 
nec in cceelestibus corporibus, scilicet anima rationalis. De Potentia, q. 5 
art. 10. 

20 Quidquid esse potest, intelligi potest. C. G., lib. 2. c. 98. 

21 Nature autem intellectuales maiorem habeut affinitatem ad totum 
quam alie nature; nam unaqueque intellectualis substantia est quod- 
ammodo omnia, in quantum ¢otzus entis comprehensiva est suo intellectu; 
convenienter igitur alia propter substantias intellectuales providentur 
ai Deo C.4G., hb. 40a te, 

22 Sicut enim universum omnia continet realiter, sic mens continet 
omnia, que realia sunt, sed idealiter, quia unaqueque mens est quod- 
ammodo omnia, in quantum comprehensiva est totius mentis; qualibet 
alia substantia participationem tantum entis habet. Petronius in C. G., 
HD. 33.8 ta, 


ne earl 


RELIGION AND VALUES 309 


fection by which he possesses the universe within 
himself, not materially as it is in the outside world, 
but spiritually.” Thanks to this faculty which 
is capable of knowing everything that is, man can 
reduce all things to the unity of his own thought.” 
The scattered and disparate forces of nature, un- 
controlled waterfalls, coal buried in the bowels of 
the earth, electricity free in the flash, none of these 
taken singly or in their native condition makes for 
scientific progress; neither does the possession of 
separate and disjointed facts make for knowledge or 
science unless they have been reduced to the unity 
of a great principle of thought, like that of causality 
or finality. The universe is not merely static, like 
a pyramid of ancient Egypt; rather it is like a 
pyramid in construction. The world is continually 
becoming more and more pointed, more and more 
centred, in just the proportion that man brings 
it under his control. 

Now, this upward tendency of things, evolution 
in the progress of things, if you will, is being effected 
by virtue of a double force, one inherent in the things 
which are perfectible, the other inherent in that 
which perfects them.” An inferior nature can never 


23 ‘To possess a thing not materially but formally, which is the 
definition of knowledge, is the noblest manner of having or possessing 
it. In Causis, I, 18. 

24 Cognitio sensitiva—circa multum diffunditur—cognitio ra- 
tionis — multum ad unum convolvit. De Div. Nom., c. VII, 1.2. Hoc 
enim rerum ordo habet, quod quanto aliquid est superius, tanto habet 
virtutem magis unitam et ad plura se extendentem. I. q. 57 art. 2; 
2=2..9.576. art. 2. 

25 In omnibus naturis ordinatis invenitur, quod ad perfectionem 
nature inferioris duo concurrunt; unum quidem, quod est secundum 
proprium motum; aliud autem quod est secundum motum superioris 
nature, 2-2. q. 2 art. 3. 


310 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


attain to the nature of a superior object except by 
the action of that superior nature, just as water can 
never be heated except by fire, or its equivalent. 
Oxygen, hydrogen, phosphates, and all similar ele- 
ments are constantly moving upward and onward 
in the pyramid of creation and entering into the 
life of plants, a privilege and a perfection which 
would be denied them if plant life did not have 
some superior power of assimilating them and mak- 
ing them live its life. Plants and chemicals enter 
into animal life, and have their existence and their 
life thus ennobled and perfected, thanks to the pecu- 
liarly superior and assimilating power of the animal 
organism. ‘The chemical, plant, and animal king- 
doms enter into man, and become one with him, 
because of the superior power of the human organ- 
ism to adopt and perfect and assimilate these lower 
natures. Man, however, has a higher power than 
the mere function of food assimilation, inasmuch as 
he possesses a soul, and every being assimilates 
according to its own nature. The universe below 
him is perfected first because it offers itself to man 
in order to be perfected, and secondly because it 
is taken up by the intellect which is actively supe- 
rior to it and capable, therefore, of ennobling and 
perfecting and “supernaturalizing” that which is 
below. 

Let us suppose for a moment that in the universe 
there existed no Force or Power superior to man, 
capable of perfecting and ennobling him. If this 
were so, then man would be the only creature in the 


RELIGION AND VALUES 311 


universe incapable of being further perfected. Oxy- 
gen finds its perfection in the plant, the plant in 
the animal, and the animal in man’s organism, and 
all three are perfected in man’s intellect. Man, 
however, would have no one to whom he could turn 
in order to be perfected. Such a universe would be 
irrational and foolish. 

Perfection of a lower nature demands two things, 
the passive power of perfection in that lower nature, 
and the active power of perfection in a nature above 
man. Whence would come this perfection if man 
were supreme, if there is no one above him? Evolu- 
tion, as you may say, would explain the process. 
But evolution merely explains the how of the proc- 
ess and not the why. Evolution, indeed, is one of 
the possible methods of creation, and every type 
of evolution which does not presuppose that the 
greater comes from the less may be regarded as an 
acceptable working hypothesis. But to deny the 
existence of a power above man, to deny a perfect- 
ing thing antecedent and superior to that which is 
to be perfected is to presuppose that the greater 
may come from the less. Evolution then, intelli- 
gently understood, does not exclude God any more 
than a “ self-made ” man can be said to exclude his 
mother. The length of time it took for the universe 
to evolve has, of course, nothing at all to do with 
the problem of its origin, and those who think it 
does might equally well suppose that if the handle 
of a brush were sufficiently long it would paint by 
itself. The problem is not whether things are go- 


312 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


ing fast or slow. ‘The problem is why they go 
at all. ! 

To return to the point under discussion: If this 
universe ends with man, then how can man ever be 
perfected? In a certain sense a purely humanistic 
religion which denies that God exists makes the 
chemicals greater than man, for it asserts that they 
are capable for being perfected, a privilege which 
is denied to man. It seems clear that no philoso- 
phy which stops with mere human values and a 
spatio-temporal continuum can escape this serious 
difficulty. 

The sacramental philosophy of St. Thomas, on 
the contrary, maintains the legitimate ideals of con- 
temporary thought by making man the crown of the 
universe; it avoids the error of making him self- 
centred and incapable of being perfected by in- 
sisting that over and above the imperfect there 
exists a perfect, over and above the transitory 
there is the immutable, over and above evolution 
and progress there is the intelligibility of evolution 
and progress, and over and above man there exists 
a God.” 

Given such a philosophy the things of this uni- 
verse, even the best of them, immediately take on a 
new and changed meaning. They are now not ends 
but means, and means in the sense that they are 
sacraments; that is to say, material stepping-stones 
to the realm of the spiritual. The universe thus 
becomes a scaffolding up which man climbs to the 


26 T. q. 23 1. q. 85 art. 3 ad. 13 3. q. 1 art. 5 ad 3. Fulton J. Sheen, 
“God and Intelligence,” p. 218 ff. 


RELIGION AND VALUES 313 


heights of the Abiding and the Eternal. Religion, 
therefore, cannot be wholly concerned with the mere 
conservation of even the noblest human values; 
it should seek rather to surmount human values, 
to make of them instruments of something perma- 
nent and lasting. Thus, the world, in the sacra- 
mental philosophy of St. Thomas, has a true value, 
but its real value lies in this, that it leads us on to 
God, or in other words, it has a value because it is 
sacramental. ; 

_The supreme duty of man is not to conserve the 
universe; rather his duty is to sacramentalize the 
universe, which may be effected by sacramentaliz- 
ing both what he knows and what he does. St. 
Thomas worked out this idea in detail when treat- 
ing the ontological character of knowledge. Every- 
thing in this world, according to him, has been made 
according to the archetypal ideas existing in the 
mind of God. ‘These archetypal ideas existing in 
the mind of God are spiritual and eternal. Such 
ideas coming down to matter by reason of His cre- 
ative act lose their character of spirituality and 
transcendence and become individual, particular, 
and finite.””’ But, in order that they may again re- 


27 Manifestum est autem quod a Deo effluit in rebus non solum illud 
quod ad naturam universalem pertinet, sed etiam ea que sunt individua- 
tionis principia; est enim causa totius substantie rei, et quantum ad 
materiam, et quantum ad formam; et secundum quod causat, sic et 
cognoscit, quia scientia ejus est causa rei. 1. q. 57 art. 3. In Verbo 
autem xterno existiterunt rationes rerum corporalium, 1. q. 56 art. 2. 
Sic enim scientia Dei se habet ad omnes res creatas sicut scientia artificis 
se habet ad artificiata. Scientia autem artifices est causa artificatorum, 
et quod artifex operatur per secum intellectum. 1. q. 12 art. 8. Sci- 
entia Dei est causa rerum, secundum quod res sunt in scientia. Ibid., 


314 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


vive in their qualities of spirituality and transcend- 
ence it is necessary that a mind strip them of their 
material character, disincarnate them, as it were, 
from all that limits them, and separate them from 
the particular. This is, of course, the task of the 
abstracting intellect of man. Standing at the con- 
fines of the world of matter and the world of spirit 
man is particularly fitted for this work. Possessing 
an affinity for both worlds, he has the power to as- 
similate matter inasmuch as he has a body, and to 
abstract the spiritual from it, inasmuch as he has 
a soul. 

But once in the possession of these ideas, man has 
a double task cut out for himself. First, he must 
exteriorize such ideas, that is, pass them out, com- 
municate them to his fellowmen and to other crea- 
tures in order thus to ennoble and spiritualize the 
world itself. In other words, he must do with them, 
and this makes for the nobility and spirituality of 
civilization. The more lofty, as a matter of fact, 
the exteriorization of the ideals of man, the nobler 
will be our civilization. He will sacramentalize 
what he does by infusing matter with his own 
thought, after the fashion of the artist, by readjust- 
ing the forces of nature and the energies of the earth 
in the light of his intellect, so that his fellow- 
creatures may in their turn be lifted up above them- 
selves as matter has been lifted above itself. __ 

Man, however, must not only exteriorize his own 


ad 2. Sicut ab illis (divinis) ideis efHuunt res ut subsistant in forma et 
in materia, ita efuunt species in mentibus creatis, que sunt cognoscitive 
rerum. De Veritate, q. 15 art. 1; 2d. 16 q. 1 art. 2 ad 2. 


RELIGION AND VALUES 315 


ideas, for not possessing a perfect life within himself, 
he must conserve his forces. His second duty then 
is to interiorize these ideas. Such an act makes for 
the development of his own spiritual life, and his 
spiritual life will take on dignity in proportion as 
he thinks thoughts about the Eternal Thinker. In 
other words, he must know nothing less than the 
source of all knowledge, God. The more sublime 
the interiorization of these ideas, the more sublime 
his contemplation, the more rich and sublime be- 
comes his spiritual life. And this task belongs to 
him, not as a citizen of this world, but as a citizen 
of the world of spirit. 

The sacramentalizing process takes adequate ac- 
count of the fact that-man is both material and 
spiritual, that he has not only a,body but also a soul. 
Sacramentalizing what he does, by spiritualizing 
the material for the sake of civilization, sacramen- 
talizing what he knows by spiritualizing his interior 
life, man is thus led to God by the double route of 
action and thought, power and knowledge, art and 
science.” 

The universe is a great sacrament and man is the 
priest of this sacrament. The mineral hidden in the 
bowels of the earth has no tongue, the plant has no 


28 1. q. 15 art. 1. Ideas may be considered either as exemplars, i.e., 
principles of action, or types, i.e., principles of cognition. The former, 
in man, belong to the practical intellect; the latter to the speculative. 
And both of them are one in God. The Second Person of the Blessed 
Trinity is the source of both and therefore the sources of all art and 
science, for what is art but participation in the Exemplary Cause, and 
what is science but participation in the Formal Cause. This is the 
ultimate reason why there is not and never can be a conflict between art 
and science. 


316 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


other language than its flower, the animal has no 
speech other than its cry. The gaspings of these 
creatures would have fallen dead before the man- 
sions of their Eternal Maker, were there not some- 
one to transmute, to ennoble, and to make them 
intelligible. If the mineral could speak, assuredly 
it would thank God for its existence; if the plants 
could speak they would thank God for their life; if 
the animals could speak they would thank God for 
their sentiency. But man can speak, and he can 
not only speak for them, but they can speak in him, 
since he sums up all things within himself in virtue - 
of his spiritual soul. Possessing them within him- 
self by knowledge, he can render thanks for them, 
pray for them, praise for them, love for them, plead 
for them, rejoice for them, entreat for them; aye 
more, like the three youths in the fiery furnace he 
can sing in their name a living Benedicite to the 
Creator.” | 

Such a system of sacramental philosophy admits 


29 As St. Bonaventure puts it in his “ Itinerarium mentis in Deum,” 
Chap. I. p. 302 — Tria opuscula $. Bonaventure, 4th ed., Quarrachi, 
1925: “If there be any man who is not enlightened by this sublime 
magnificence of created things, he is blind. If there be any man who is 
not aroused by the clamor of nature, he is deaf. If there be any one 
who, seeing all these works of God, does not praise Him, he is dumb; if 
there be any one who, from so many signs, cannot perceive the First 
Principle, that man is foolish. Open, therefore, your eyes, incline 
your spiritual ears, unloosen your lips and apply your heart (Prov. xxii. . 
17) so that in every creature you may see, hear, praise, love, worship, 
magnify, and honor your God, lest otherwise the whole world should 
rise up against you. For on account of such ignorance ‘ the whole world 
shall fight against the unwise’; but to the wise, on the contrary, all this 
shall be matter for glory, since they can say with the prophet: ‘ For 
thou hast given me a delight, O Lord, in thy doings, and in the works of 
thy Hand I shall rejoice.’ ” 


RELIGION AND VALUES 317 


of “ world-loyalty ” for which Professor Whitehead 
is so much concerned, but does not prostitute man 
by making him the slave of a spatio-temporal con- 
tinuum, or reduce him to an accident of a mere 
qualitative physics. There can be no ‘“ world- 
loyalty” unless there is at the same time “ loyalty 
to God.” Being “loyal to the universe” is an 
exaggerated and wholesale form of selfishness and 
a self-centred universe would be just as cold and 
chilling as a self-centred individual. The universe 
and the things that are in it have their function, and 
their function is to be the servants of man. They 
await upon his sacramental power; they await to be 
ennobled in him and by him, and to be brought back 
to God. 

The world then has a value, but a sacramental 
value — it leads us on to God. And God does not 
exist to conserve, or to preserve, or to ground our 
values, otherwise the greater would be the servant 
of theless. The philosophy of value makes man the 
centre of religion, God being the preservative of 
man’s interests. The sacramental philosophy makes 
God the centre of religion and endows the world 
with a value because it conceives of the world as 
the instrument of man in the great work of uniting 
himself to his perfect end. The sacramental phi- 
losophy thus adds something to even the best of the 
philosophies of value, namely, absoluteness. It in- 
sists that religion is not concerned primarily with 
values, but with God, just as art is not so much 
concerned with the pleasure of man as it is with 


318 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


beauty. The universe, therefore, is not valuable, 
but sacramental. The valuable looks to man, the 
sacramental looks to God. Value tends to the 
relative, the sacramental to the absolute. Values 
may appeal to God as their Ground and as the 
hope for their conservation, just as a man may 
appeal to police protection in time of danger. At 
bottom, however, it is not so much God in Whom 
the value-philosopher is interested as it is his own 
values. To say that he is interested in the preserva- 
tion of God’s values is to say that God has values, 
which is to misunderstand the very nature of God. 
God has nothing. He is. God, in the strict sense 
of the term, has not even a value for man,” for to 
say God has value for man is to distinguish existence 
from value. God is everything to man, and without 
God man is nothing. If man had a value for God, 
then God is not God, for in such a view the ultimate 
perfection of God would depend on man. The 
failure of man to worship God would then mean that 
God would lack the totality of His value, and hence 
would be deprived of His total perfection. It is 
quite another thing to say that man may be pleasing 
to God. 

In conclusion, the sacramental philosophy of St. 
Thomas answers the best ideals of modern thought 
by bringing man into prominence and making him 
the king of creation, but it does not suffer from the 
defect of doing so at the expense of God Himself. 


80 Deus est finis rerum, non sicut aliquid constitutum, aut aliquid 
effectum a rebus, neque ita quod aliquid ei a rebus acquiratur; sed hoc 
solo modo, quia ipse rebus acquiritur. C. G. lib. 3. c. 18. 


RELIGION AND VALUES 319 


Man is still king of the universe, and God is King of 
men. Everything was made for man, and man was 
made for God. The universe stands midway be- 
tween the two as the great sacrament of the natural 
order, the means by which man elevates himself 
from a mere animal contentment with things that 
have value to the very realm where there are no 
values but only God. 


CHAPTER XI 


THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 


ELIGION may be studied historically, 1.e., 
R in its genesis and development; or psy- 
chologically, i.e., in its effect upon the 
mind of the believer and the reactions following 
his beliefs; or finally it may be studied metaphys- 
ically, i.e., in its rational ground and foundation. 
Of the three the last is the most important be- 
cause the most fundamental. Without denying the 
value of the science of comparative religion, the psy- 
chology of religion, and the history of religion, we 
propose to limit this study to the fundamental 
reason for religion and primary religious acts. 
The philosopher seeking the foundation of relig- 
ion cannot rest content with certain vague charac- 
teristics which refer only to a small part of creation, 
or to a particular civilization, or to a peculiar mental 
outlook. If religion is essential it must be rooted in 
something which quite escapes the psychologist who 
studies only mind, and the historian who is inter- 
ested only in persons and events. Only the philoso- 
pher who penetrates into the secrets of the universe, 
not by some narrow abstraction which limits his 
gaze to strata of earth or motion of stars or whirl 
of electrons, but who can embrace all in the uni- 
320 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 321 


versality of the science of being as being, can tell 
us where the foundations of religion are laid. 
Philosophy reminds us that everything in this 
world, whether inert or living, moral or a-moral, 
spiritual or temporal, can be said to be, to be true, 
and to be good. Nothing that is, or was, or can be, 
can fall under any other classification more ulti- 
mate than that of being, truth, and goodness which 
the Scholastics have called the transcendentals.* 


Being 


Being is a concept so simple that it cannot be 
defined for there are no ideas anterior to it. Noth- 
ing is known or knowable except in and through 
being. Even the possible and nothing are intelli- 
gible only through it.” One of the great interpreters 
of the Angelic Doctor, Cajetan, has said that the 
concept of being is so extensive that it can be 
applied (with correctives of course) to everything 
from pure possibility up to God. Man might close 
his eyes a thousand times and imagine things as 
small as the dewdrop and as distant as the stars 
whose light has not yet reached the earth, but he 
can never escape calling those things beings, nor 

1 BEING, De Ente et Essentia. Quod; q. 2 art. 3; De Veritate, q. 1. 
Breet, fib. 1,'c. 26. TRUE, 1. .q. 16 art. 1, 2, 3,43 Ci G. lib. 
1. Cc. 59; De Veritate, q. 1 art. 9; De Veritate, q. 1 art 1; art. 2, 3, 4, in 
Perih lib. 1. lect. 3. GOOD, De Veritate, p. 21 art. 3, art. 6; 1. q. 16 art. 
4; C.G. lib. 1. c. 373 1 q. 5 art. 1 ad 1; in Eth. Nic. lib. 1. lect. 1 ad 1; 
3 d 27 q. 1. art. 4; De Malo q. 1 art. 2; 2 d 34 art 3. Here we neglect 
the negative attribute of all things, viz., its indivision, in virtue of which 
a thing is one, and consider only the positive attributes. cf. 1. q. 11 art. 


1; 1. q. 6 art. 1 ad 1; De; Pot. q. 9 art. 7; 1 d. 24 q. 1 art. 3. 
#1. q. 85 art. 3. q. 1; De Veritate, q. 1. 


322 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


will he any less escape using that fundamental 
word in all languages, concerning each one of them: 
it 75. | : 

Because of its generality certain ancient philoso- 
phers, such as Parmenides, and certain modern phi- 
losophers, such as Hegel, have taken it to be purely 
static or pure indetermination, and have concluded 
to one or the other forms of pantheism. But such 
conclusions are travesties on its true notion. Being 
is not so confined within itself that it cannot get 
out of itself any more than an equation. In the 
Scholastic conception, being has a certain referribil- 
ity to knowledge and to the will —the two great 
faculties of the soul. Then transcendental property 
of being loses nothing by these references, for the 
soul, because of its spirituality, is capable of be- 
coming all things by knowledge — “ quodammodo 
est omnia.” It is therefore possible to envisage 
either in the real state or in the possible state, the 
concordance or non-concordance of being and the 
intellect; and the suitableness or non-suitableness 
of being with the will or the appetite. In the first 
case the concordance is called the true, the non- 
concordance the false. In the second case, the suit- 
ableness is called the good, and its contrary evil. 


True * 
When St. Thomas treats the problem of the 
object of the intellect, he says indifferently that it 


3 Here we are not concerned with logical or moral, but metaphysical 
truth. 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 323 


is truth or being, a statement which betrays his 
sound realism. ‘There should be no difficulty in 
understanding true and truth as equivalent to real 
and reality. We speak of a “ true friend,” a “ veri- 
table saint,” etc. What is meant by ascribing truth 
to a thing? It means that it corresponds to a 
mental type or ideal. “We call a liquid true wine 
or real wine, for instance, when it verifies in itself 
the definition we have formed of the nature of 
wine. Hence whenever we apply the terms ‘ true’ 
or ‘truth’ to a thing we shall find that we are con- 
sidering the thing not absolutely and in itself but 
in relation to an idea in our minds; we do not say 
simply that it is true, we say that it is truly such 
or such a thing, i.e., that it # really of a certain 
nature already conceived by our minds. If the 
appearance of the thing suggests comparison with 
some such ideal type or nature, and if the thing is 
seen on examination not really to verify this nature 
in itself, we say that it is not really or truly such 
a thing: e.g., that a certain liquid is not really wine, 
or is not true wine. When we have no such ideal 
type to which to refer a thing, when we do not know 
its nature, cannot classify and name it, we have to 
suspend our judgment and say that we really do 
not know what the thing zeally is. Hence, for 
example, the new rays discovered by Rontgen were 
called provisionally ‘X-Rays,’ their real nature 
being at first unknown. We see then that real or 
ontological truth is simply reality considered as 
conformable with an ideal type, with an idea in 


324. RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


the mind.” * It follows then that if there were no 
intellect there would be no truth.’ 


Good 


Everything is good. This sounds like a paradox, 
for while it may be admitted that birds and flowers, 
sunsets and food are good, it seems difficult to ad- 
mit that even a toothache is good. But this does 
not contradict the thesis rightly understood. The 
true meaning of the thesis is not that every being 
is good in every respect and condition, but only 
that every being possesses some goodness, i. e., 
every being is good in so far as it is the object of a 
natural tendency or desire. Every being inasmuch 
.as it is desirable is good. It is therefore rigorously 
true to say that every being is good, provided one 
immediately adds: inasmuch as it is being.® This 
goodness which we predicate of any and every’ 
actual being, may be (a) the term of the natural 
tendency or appetite of that being itself, bonum s1b1, 
and thus a cancer even though it be bad for the 
stomach, considered in itself biologically and 
chemically, has its own tendencies, purposes, laws, 


* Peter Coffey, “ Ontology,” 1918, p. 159. 

5 Si intellectus humanus non esset, adhuc res dicerentur vere in or- 
dine ad intellectum divinum. Sed si uterque intellectus, quod est impos- 
sibile, intelligeretur auferri, nullo modo ratio veritatis remaneret. De 
Veritate, q. 1 art. 2.“ ‘Though conceptual truth is caused in our intel- 
lects by the object, it is not necessary that the form of the truth should be 
previously discoverable in the object; just as health is not discoverable in 
the medicine previous to taking it. For it is the power of the medicine, 
not its healthiness which causes health; since its agency is not univocal. 
And in like manner, it is the being of the thing, not its truth which 
causes conceptual truth.” 1-2, 16 art. 1 ad 3. 

a Ve, Mee ke 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 325 


and we cannot deny that its development according 
to these laws is “ good” for its own specific nature. 
(b) It may be conceivably the term of the appetite 
of some other being, bonum alteri, in the sense that 
in the general scheme of reality things are helpful 
to one another, and are intended by their inter- 
action and cooperation with one another to sub- 
serve the wider end which is the good of the whole 
system of reality.’ 

So true is it that everything that is, is true, and 
is good that it is a commonplace truth of Scholastic 
metaphysics that being, goodness and truth are 
convertible terms. Ens et verum convertuntur; 
ens et bonum convertuntur. Goodness and truth 
add nothing real to being, nor do they contract it, 
but they formally add a referribility to something 
else. Ex parte rei, they are identical with being. 
“The true and the good add to the concept of being 
the relative idea of the perfective.” ° 

Stating truths in terms of metaphysics may seem 


7 For a full development of these points, cf. P. Coffey’s “ Ontology,” 
p. 180 ff, and Mercier’s “ Metaphysique,” p. 231. 

8 De Veritate, q. 21 art. 1. “If, then, the True and the Good are 
to be considered as they are in themselves, in such manner the True is 
prior to the Good according to its nature, since it is perfective of 
something else according to the nature of its form (or species) ; but the 
Good is not only perfective of something else after the nature of its 
form, but according to its real entity. Thus the nature of the Good 
contains within itself more than the nature of the True, and in a 
manner is constituted by addition to it. Wherefore, the Good pre- 
supposes the True, but the True presupposes the One; since the nature 
of the True is perfected in the apprehension of the intellect, and a thing 
is intelligible, in so far as it is One, according to the Philosopher in the 
fourth Book of the Metaphysics. Hence, this is the order of these 
transcendentals, if considered as they are in themselves. After Being 
comes Unity, then Truth; lastly, after Truth, Goodness.” De Veritate, 
en eet. 9. et, Cf.°1. q. 16 art. 4 ad 2. 


326 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


to some to be equivalent to divorcing them from 
the practical. Anything that smacks of the intel- 
lectual is sometimes termed with ridicule a 
“‘ dogma” and if there is one thing modern religion 
will not tolerate it is dogmas; it wants practice and 
experience. But does not this distaste for a rational 
presentation of truths seem a little inconsistent? 
To say we want no dogmas in religion is to assert 
a dogma, and a dogma that needs a tremendous 
amount of justification. Two and two equals four 
is a dogma; two apples plus two apples is experi- 
ence. The two are not contrary, but one merely the 
particular application of the other. As a matter of 
fact the abstract is not true, because the concrete is 
true, but vice versa. So too in the metaphysical 
presentation of religion the experience of these 
truths is not anything different from their essence, 
but only a difference in application. But how 
bring these truths down to the level of experience? 

There are three fundamental cravings in the hu- 
man heart, to which all others are resolvable. They 
are the craving for being or life, truth and love. 
The first of these, the inclination toward the pres- 
ervation and the perfection of life is the basis of 
the others. A human being will sacrifice all other 
possessions, wealth, pleasures, honors and the like 
providing that he can cling on to that which he treas- 
ures last of all—life. The very tendency to put 
out our hand before us as we walk in the dark is 
a proof that we are willing to lose even our members 
provided we can conserve our existence. 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 327 


The second fundamental craving is the desire 
to know and possess truth. The first question a 
child asks when he comes into this world is the 
question: Why? Every babe is an incipient phi- 
losopher. He tears his toys to pieces to find out what 
makes the wheels go round, and then later on, when 
he grows to man’s estate he tears apart the wheels 
of the universe by a mental process to determine 
why its wheels go round, in other words, to know 
its causes. Man has an appetite for truth as he has 
for food, and truth is just as satisfying to the mind, 
even more so, than food is for the body. 

The third fundamental craving is the desire to 
love and to be loved. From the first day when God 
said “It is not good for man to be alone,” even unto 
the end, man will hunger and thirst for love. Com- 
panions and friends will be sought out to whom he 
can unpack his heart with words, and above all, 
life-long friends who will measure up to the test 
of friendship — one in whose presence he can keep 
silence. 

What makes a man then? A soul which is life, 
which seeks truth, which seeks love. Being, Truth, 
and Love. That is man. 

But do we carry within ourselves the fulfillment 
of these appetites? We possess a modicum of life, 
a modicum of truth, a modicum of love, but do 
we possess life, truth, and love in their entirety? 
The richness of our life is borrowed; the children of 
parents do not always live in the family circle, but 
obeying the law of nature, leave them who gave 


328 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


them life, to establish their own fireside. Is not 
our life an approaching death? Does not each 
tick of the clock bring us nearer the grave; does not 
the very food we eat burn up our body and hasten 
the end of our earthly life? “Our hearts like muf- 
fled drums are beating funeral marches to the 
grave.” “From hour to hour we ripe and ripe; 
then from hour to hour we rot and rot.” Ina word, 
is not death mingled with life? 

And while truth is a condition of our nature, 
we cannot say that we possess truth in its entirety. 
Are we not under the necessity of being taught; does 
not the multitude of religions, political doctrines and 
social theories prove we are but vaguely and dimly 
possessing truth? If but our sight were lost in our 
cradle much of the knowledge of truth would be 
shut off from us. Are we not always searching 
after the secrets of life and yet never fully under- 
standing nor comprehending them? In a word — 
is not truth mingled with error; is not knowledge 
mingled with falsity? Have not the great gen- 
iuses of all times confessed that after years of study 
they were still ignorant of truth, and that they 
seemed to stand merely on the shore of truth with 
its infinite expanse stretching before them? How 
often too, study in old age corrects the prejudices of 
youth, and how often those who have come to mock 
have remained to pray. We do not possess the 
fulness of truth. Love too is a condition of our 
nature, and yet who can say that he has never had 
sorrow? Are not broken friendships, ruined homes, 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 329 


sad hearts eloquent proofs that man does not pos- 
sess the fullness of love? How often do we not 
feel that love reaches its satiety; that it loses its 
bloom and its freshness ; that often it turns to hate. 
And even when it does remain fresh and delicate, 
it ends and nothing that ends is perfect. A day 
must come when the last cake is crumbled at life’s 
great feast and the last embrace passed from 
friend to friend. We do not possess the fullness 
of love. 

Though we are men, though we possess the three 
conditions by which man is man, we find imperfec- 
tions in these three conditions. Lifeis mingled with 
death, truth with error, love with hate. Our life 
then is not in creatures, our truth then is not in the 
spoken word, our love then is not in what we see. 
Life cannot exist with death, truth with error, love 
with hate. | 

But where are we to find Supreme Life, Su- 
preme Truth, Supreme Love? Where find the source 
of daylight that is in this room? Not under the 
chair, for there there is light mingled with darkness. 
Not under the table, for there also there is light 
mingled with darkness. Where find its source 
then? I must go outside of this room, out to some- 
thing which is pure light without any admixture of 
darkness, namely to the sun. There is the reason 
for all the light that surrounds me. So too, if I 
am to find the source of the Life, the Truth and the 
Love in this world, I must go out beyond this world, 
out beyond a life which is mingled with its shadow 


330 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


death, out beyond a truth which is mingled with its 
shadow error, and out beyond a love which is min- 
gled with its shadow hate. I must go out to that 
which is Perfect Life, Perfect Truth, and Perfect 
Love — to God. 


“There is a quest that haunts me 
In the nights when I am alone; 
The need to ride, where the ways divide 
The Known from the Unknown. 
I mount what thought is near me, 
And soon I reach the place, 
The tenuous rim where the Seen grows dim 
And the Sightless hides its face. 


I have ridden the wind, 

I have ridden the sea, 

I have ridden the moon and stars, 

I have sat my feet in the stirrup seat 
Of a comet coursing Mars, 

And everywhere thro’ the earth and air 
My thought speeds, lightning shod, 

It comes to a place where checking pace 
It cries, ‘Beyond lies God!’ ” 


Beyond lies God— Perfect Life: I am the Life; 
Perfect Truth: J am the Truth; Perfect Love: God 
is Love. Ens, Verum, Bonum — Life, Truth and 
Love. 

Now we are in a position to understand why 
Being, Truth, and Love are the transcendental at- 
tributes of everything in this world. As reflections 
or participations of that which is Perfect, they can 
exist only in virtue of different kinds of Causality. 
There is a thing before me. I may ask: what is it? 
The answer is: a statue of the Madonna. In Meta- 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 331 


physics the Madonna, the form, or the model, is 
called the Formal Cause. Again, I may ask: who 
madeit? The answer is Raphael. In Metaphysics, 
Raphael would be called the Efficient Cause. Fi- 
nally, I might ask: why was it made? The answer 
might be: to glorify the Mother of God. This 
motive, or intention or end, in Metaphysics is called 
the Final Cause.® 

Now the transcendentals are related to these cau- 
salities. In other words, everything that is, is be- 
cause God is its Efficient Cause; everything is true, 
because God is its Formal Cause; everything is good 
because God is its Final Cause.2° 

Speaking of God as Efficient Cause St. Thomas 
writes: “It must be said that every being in any 
Way existing is from God. For whatever is found 
in anything by participation, must be caused in it 
by that to which it belongs essentially, as iron be- 
comes ignited by fire. Subsisting being must be 
one; if whiteness were self-subsisting, it would be 
one since whiteness is multiplied by its recipients. 
Therefore all beings apart from God are not their 
own being, but are beings by participation. It must 
be then that all things which are diversified by the 
diverse participation of being, so as to be more or 
less perfect, are caused by one first Being, Who pos- 
sesses being most completely. Hence Plato said 

9 Here we ignore the material cause as we are interested only in 
Supreme Causalities, and not the matter from which things are made. 

10 3. q. 44 art. 1, 2, 3) 43 q. 65 art. 2. q. 103 art. 2; C. G. lib. 


1. C. 37; lib. 3. c. 17, 18; lib. 4.c.21. De Veritate, q. 20 art. 4; De Pot. 
q. 7 art. 1 ad 3. ‘ 


332. | RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


(Parmen. XXVI) that unity must come before 
multitude; and Aristotle said (Metap. II, text 4) 
that whatever is greatest in being and greatest in 
truth is the cause of all being and every truth just 
as whatever is the greatest in heat is the cause of 
all heat. 

“¢ Since to be caused does not enter into the essence 
of being as such, it is possible for us to find a being 
uncaused. ... But the reason why an efficient 
cause is required is not merely because the effect is 
not necessary, but because the effect might not be if 
the cause were not.” ™* 

But God is not only Efficient Cause, in virtue of 
which things possess existence; He is also Formal 
Cause in virtue of which things are true. There 
is an Intelligence to which reality is essentially con- 
formed, other than the purely human intellect. 
Although ontological truth is for us proximately 
and immediately the conformity of reality with our 
own conceptions, it is primarily and fundamentally 
the essential conformity of all reality with the 
Divine Mind. God has created all things according 
to the archetypal ideas existing in His Mind, and 
the essence of everything for that reason is an imita- 
tion or reflection of these exemplar ideas. That is 
why St. Thomas holds there would be truth even 
though every human mind were annihilated, for 
there would still be the Divine Mind with which 
all things are in conformity.” 


ai GC. ed Ott 
12 De Veritate, q. 1 art. 1 and 2. Sicut enim omnes rationes rerum 
intelligibiles primo existunt in Deo, et ab eo derivantur in alios intel- 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 333 


St. Thomas puts this doctrine in these words: 
“Truth is found in the intellect according as it 
apprehends a thing as it is; and in things according 
as they have been conformable to an intellect. This 
is to the greatest degree found in God. For His own 
being is not only conformed to His intellect, but 
it is the very act of His intellect; and His act of 
understanding is the measure and cause of every 
other being and of every other intellect, and He 
Himself is His own existence and act of understand- 
ing. Whence it follows not only that Truth is in 
Him, but He is Truth itself, and the Sovereign and 
First/ Truth.” * x 

Since God is the Formal Cause of all Truth, 
because all things are made according to His Exem- 
plar ideas, as the house conforms to archetypal ideas 
in the mind of the architect, it follows that we see 
all truth in the Eternal Truth. We can say that 
we see all bodies in the sun, not because we see them 
in the solar disc itself, but because we could not 
see them except by means of the light of the sun. 
Although there is a proximate ground for truth with- 
out taking God into consideration, there is really 
no ultimate ground for it without Him. As one 
object may be reflected many times in a mirror, so 
too, the Divine Truth may be imaged imperfectly 
in all creatures. That is why there is a unanimous 
accord among all men in judgments relative to 
first principles and their legitimate conclusions; 


lectus ut actu intelligant; sic etiam derivantur in creaturas ut sub- 
sistant 1. q. 104 art. 3. 
aoe 16 art. 5. 


334. RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


all these are ultimately resolvable into the Su- 
preme Truth which is God and by Whom all things 
are true.”* : 

There still remains the question, why things are 
good, and the answer to this, in its metaphysical and 
ultimate basis, must be that things are good because 
God is their Final Cause, and His intention or 
purpose in making things was the manifestation of 
His Goodness. “ Everything is called good,” writes 
St. Thomas, “ from the Divine Goodness, as from 
the first exemplary effective and final principle of 
all goodness.” 3 

“ Nevertheless, everything is called good by 
reason of the similitude of the Divine Goodness, 
belonging to it, which is formally its own goodness, 
whereby it is denominated good. And so of all 
things there is one Goodness and yet many things 
which are good.’* 

Everything tends toward its perfection by the 
very fact that it tends toward its end, because 
everything is good in the measure of its own achieve- 
ment. Matter tends toward its perfection through 
physical laws; living beings tend to theirs by in- 
stincts, and man by reason. As the arrow would 
never speed toward its target unless there was an 
archer, neither would things tend to their perfection 
unless there was some Supreme Archer. And in the 


14 Sicut igitur anime et res aliz, vere quidem dicuntur in suis 
naturis, secundum quod similitudinem illius summz nature habent, 
quz est ipsa veritas, quum sit suum intellectum esse; ita id quod per 
animam cognitum est, verum est, in quantum illius divine veritatis 
quam Deus cognoscit, similitudo quedam existit in ipsa. C. G, lib. 3 c. 47- 

+S td, 6 alt. ac 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 335 


measure that each tends toward the good, it ap- 
proaches the Divine, for every being resembles God 
inasmuch as it is good. 

God’s Will is the Cause of all things, or in other 
words, since in God, Will and Goodness are identi- 
cal, God’s Goodness is the Cause of all things. God 
has no need of time for His Life for He is Eternal; 
He has no need of Space for He is Spiritual; “ Since 
then, the Divine Being is undetermined, and con- 
tains in Himself the full perfection of Being, it can- 
not be that He acts by a necessity of His Nature.” *° 
If He does act, it is not because of indigence, or need, 
but because of Perfect Liberality. “ He who wills 
to take a bitter draught, in doing so wills nothing 
else than health; and this alone moves his will. It 
is different with one who takes a draught that is 
pleasant, which anyone may will to do, not only 
for the sake of health, but also for its own sake. 
Hence, although God wills things apart from Him- 
self only for the sake of the end, which is His own 
goodness, it does not follow that anything else moves 
His Will, except His goodness. So, as He under- 
stands things apart from Himself, by understanding 
His own essence, so He wills things apart from Him- 
self, by willing His own goodness.” ** “ God’s Will 
is the Cause of all things. It must needs be there- 
fore that a thing has existence, and is good only 
inasmuch as it is willed by God.” * “We love things 
because goodness in things calls forth our love; but 
God is not drawn toward things because things 


$05, G. 19 art: 4. a'r. g. 19 art. 2, AO TG, SO Alc eh 


336 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


possess goodness, but rather they possess goodness 
because He willed them.” *® And since God willed 
creatures from all eternity it is true to say that He 
loved creatures from all eternity. He did not begin 
to love man when man was made, as He did not be- 
gin to know man when man was made. He knew and 
loved man when man existed only as an idea in 
His Mind from all eternity.”” God’s love is eternal 
and infinite. Our love is temporal and finite. Our 
love is like the estuary of a stream which flows 
strongly and abundantly as long as it is confined 
within narrow banks, but becomes feeble and 
shallow when its banks widen. The more we love, 
the less we love; 1.e., the greater the extension of our 
affection, the lesser the intensity. As the circum- 
ference of our love widens it becomes farther and 
farther away from the centre of its flame. But 
this is not true of God. Though all enjoy sunlight, 
yet one does not receive less of it than the other. 
Though God loves all, He loves each one infinitely, 
and even though thousands sit down on the green 
grass for the banquet, each one rises “ with his fill.” 

Being, Truth, and Love —three names for God 
Who is the Efficient, Formal and Final Cause of 
this universe. These three: Power, Law and Good- 
ness are found written across the face of this uni- 
verse; Power, because God is the Omnipotence that 
acts; Potentia ut exequens; Law because God is 


19 Ibid., C. G., lib. 1. c. 91; De Veritate, q. 27 art. 1. C. G. lib. 3, 
foro, 

20 Deus ab eterno dilexit creaturas in propiis naturis et volent eas 
esse, non autem tunc. 1. q. 20 art. 2 ad. 2; 3 d 32 q. 3. C. G. lib. 
4G 3%, 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 337 


the Wisdom that directs: Sapientia ut dirigens; 
Goodness because God is the Will that orders: Vol- 
untas ut imperans. Ex Ipso, because from Him all 
things have received their being; Per Ipsum, because 
through Him, all things have been ordered accord- 
ing to law; In Ipso because to Him all things tend 
and strive as their ultimate end.” 

Reason then can know God through the visible 
things of the earth, and the conclusion of reason is 
not just the zdea of God, but God, and God is not 
an abstract mathematical entity, not a temporal- 
spatial quality, but the Perfect Being, Truth, and 
Love of Which all earthly existence, and earthly 
truth and earthly love is but a dim far-off echo and 
feeble reflection. And if we would transpose these 
philosophical terms to the concrete and still know 
what God is in the realm of the human experience, 
we need but sound the depths of the human heart. 
If we receive but a two-billionth part of the light and 
heat that streams from the sun, may it not be that 
we receive an equally small fraction of that which is 
Perfect Life, Perfect Truth and Perfect Love? If 
human life at its best is a joy, then what must be Per- 
fect Life! Ifa feeble truth which we but dimly grasp 
can so possess our minds as to give us a peace which 
no earthly treasure can give, then what must be Per- 
fect Truth! If a human heart in its purest quest 
for love can so thrill and exalt and cast us into 
an ecstasy, then what must be the Heart of Hearts! 
If the spark is so bright, what must be the Flame! 


21 St. Thomas In Rom. iii, 16. 


338. RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


And here, if we be permitted to go a step further 
and make use of revelation, the meaning of Being, 
Truth and Goodness becomes even more clear. 
Revelation and faith, be it understood, do not 
mean doing violence to our reason. Faith no more 
destroys reason than a telescope destroys the vision. 
Faith is a new kind of daylight. We have the same 
eyes at night as we have in the day and yet we can- 
not see things during the night. And why? Be- 
cause we lack the light of the sun. So too, two men 
may have the same minds, but one cannot see 
truths which the other can see; two look on bread, 
the one sees bread, the other Emmanuel. “Two 
men looked out through prison bars, the one 
saw mud, the other stars.” And faith does not 
mean, as it does in the minds of some modern theo- 
logians, a leap in the dark, an hypothesis, a chance, 
a wish or a will to believe; faith is the assent of 
the intellect to a truth on the authority of God 
revealing. 

Now, if we make use of this new kind of daylight, 
what new illumination is brought to a natural 
knowledge of God? Certainly this, if nothing else, 
namely an answer to the question the Greeks used 
to ask: If there is only one God, how is He happy; 
and what does He think about? The answer is the 
Trinity, which so expands the rational knowledge 
of God as to reveal that Being, Truth and Love; 
Power, Wisdom, and Goodness; are really God 
the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost.” 


22 Ex creaturis, ex quibus cognitionem accipimus, possumus per 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 339 


God the Father: the Power and Efficient Cause; 
God the Son: Truth and Formal Cause; God the 
Holy Ghost: Goodness and Final Cause. 

“To the Father is appropriated Power which 
is chiefly shown in creation, and therefore it is 
attributed to Him to be the Creator. To the Son is 
appropriated Wisdom, through which the intellec- 
tual agent acts; and therefore it is said: Through 
Whom all things were made. And to the Holy 
Ghost is appropriated goodness, to which belong 
both government which brings things to their proper 
end, and the giving of life— for life consists in a 
certain interior movement; and the First Mover is 
the end and goodness.” ” 

But how are there three Persons in God? God 
thinks; He thinks a thought. But thoughts are 
not born to die and die to be reborn in the mind of 
God. In’God there is one Thought which reaches 
to the abyss of all things that are known or can be 
known. That Thought is a Word as my own 
thoughts are words: “In the beginning was the 
Word and the Word was with God.” And the 
Word is called a Son because generated, not physi- 
cally, but spiritually as my own mind generates 
such thoughts as justice, fortitude, prudence. The 
principle of generation is called the Father; the term 
of generation is called the Son. And thus the 


certitudinem devenire in cognitionem essentialium attributorum, non 
autem in cognitionem personalium proprietatum . . . Ex his manifestatis 
personarum per essentialia attributa apropriatio nominatur. 1. q. 39 
art. 7. 

ot, 4. 34 art. 8 ad 4. 


340 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


Father in the ecstasy of the first and real paternity 
can say: “ Thou Art My Son; this day have I begot- 
ten Thee ” — this day of the agelessness of eternity, 
this day without beginning or end; this day without 
morning or night, the Father without any priority 
in time communicates to His Son all the nobility 
and majesty of His Being, as an earthly father in 
time may communicate to his earthly son all the 
nobility and majesty of his character. 

Every being loves its own perfection. The per- 
fection of the eye is color, and the eye loves color; 
the perfection of the mind is truth, and the mind 
loves truth. Love is not something in me, or in 
you; it is something between us in which two hearts 
beat as one. The Father loves the Son Whom He 
has eternally engendered; the Son loves the Father 
Who engendered Him, and love between them be- 
cause it is infinite, does not express itself by cries 
or canticles, or embraces, but only by that which is 
ineffable, the like of which we have nothing in this 
world, save a sigh. And that is a poor, earthly 
reason why that mysterious bond of Love between 
Father and Son is called the Holy Spirit. 

Just as water, ice and steam are all manifesta- 
tions of the same substance; just as the length, 
breadth, and thickness of a cathedral do not make 
three cathedrals, but one; just as carbon, diamond 
and graphite are manifestations of one and the 
same nature; just as the color, perfume and form of 
a rose do not make three roses, but one; just as the 
soul, the intellect and the will do not make three 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 341 


lives, but one; just as 1 X I X I —1 and not 3, 
sO in a much more mysterious way there are three 
Persons in the Blessed Trinity and yet only one 
God.” 

This is but the feeblest exposition of the mystery 
of the Trinity, but it may serve as a suggestion of 
the continuity of philosophy and theology. It 
is not our purpose to go into the field of Revelation, 
but merely to suggest it as the crown of philosophy. 
The important element in the demonstration thus 
far is that God as Power, Wisdom and Goodness 
is the cause of this world and everything in it from 
material to the spiritual. i 

Since God is to be defined either as Pure Being 
(Actus Purus), Truth and Goodness, in the natural 
order, or as Father, Son and Holy Ghost in the 
supernatural order, it follows in virtue of the three- 
fold causality that there will be a three fold link 
binding man to God thus constituting the essence of 
religion.” First, we must know God (Truth) ; 
secondly, we must love God (Goodness) ; thirdly, 
we must serve God (Being), and in these three 
words, “ Know, Love, and Serve,” is contained all 
human wisdom in the natural order, the end of 
every student’s quest, and the goal of every inquir- 


24 Cum increata Trinitas distinguatur secundum processionem verbi 
a dicente et amoris ab utroque, in creatura naturali, in qua invenitur 
processio verbi secundum intellectum, et processio amoris secundum 
voluntatem potest dici imago Trinitatis increate secundum quamdam 
representationem speciei. In aliis creaturis, non invenitur principium 
verbi, et verbum et amor. 1. q. 13 art. 4. 

25 Religio proprie importat ordinem ad Deum; ipse enim est, cui 
principaliter alligari debemus tamquam indeficienti principio, 2-2. 
g. 81 art. 1. 


342 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


ing mind. And the child in a foreign mission who 
from the simple examples of a foreign missionary 
has learned that life means to know, love, and 
serve God, knows more than our learned philoso- 
phers for whom God is a mental projection or a 
“nisus of the spatio-temporal continuum.” 


Know Gop 


The human mind is on the quest of causes, and 
can find no repose short of Him Who is First 
Cause. There are some philosophers like Spencer, 
who have said that the First Cause is Unknowable, 
but Spencer really has told us more about it than 
many Scholastics have told us about God. The 
hunger and thirst for truth is as deep-seated as 
human nature; the very restlessness the mind ex- 
periences under an unsolved problem proves that 
error, half truths and ignorance are radically unsat- 
isfying. | 

St. Augustine has very well expressed the craving 
which drives the intellect to know its God. “I 
asked the earth,” he writes, “ and it answered me, 
‘I am not He’; and whatsoever are in it confessed 
the same. I asked the sea and the deeps, and the 
living creeping things, and they answered, * We are 
not thy God, seek above us.’ I asked the moving 
air; and the whole air with its inhabitants answered, 
‘Anaximenes was deceived. I am not God.’ [I 
asked the heavens, sun, moon and stars; ‘nor’ 
(say they) ‘are we the God whom thou seekest.’ 
And I replied unto all things which encompass the 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 343 


door of my flesh: ‘Ye have told me of my God, 
that ye are not He; tell me something of Him.’ 
And they cried out with a loud voice, ‘He made 
us.’ My questioning them, was my thoughts on 
them: and their form of beauty gave the answer. 
And I turned myself unto myself, and said to my- 
self: “Who art Thou’? and I answered: ‘A man.’ 
And behold, in me there present themselves to me, 
soul and body, one without, the other within. By 
which of these ought I to seek my God? I had sought 
Him in the body from earth to heaven, so far as I 
could send messengers, the beams of mine eyes. 
But the better is the inner, for to it, as presiding and 
judging, all the bodily messengers reported the an- 
swers of heaven and earth, and all things therein, 
who said, ‘ We are not God, but He made us.’ These 
things did my inner man know by the ministry of 
the outer: I, the inner, knew them; I, the mind, 
through the sense of my body. I asked the whole 
frame of the world about my God; and it answered 
me, ‘ I am not He, but He made me.’ ” * 

The mind must know, but it never knows any- 
thing fully until it knows God, and the least knowl- 
edge of God is worth more than the knowledge of all 
created things. If we knew what the sun was we 
would not need to know what its ray is; if we knew 
the ocean we would know the chemistry of a drop 
of water; if we knew the circle, we would know 
what the smallest arc is; and in knowing God we 
know all things. 


26 « Confessions,” Bk. 10. 


344. RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


If we do not know God, then we know nothing, 
for we know nothing in its ground, its cause or the 
reason of its being. Education does not mean the 
knowledge of facts such as might be gathered in a 
five-foot shelf, or condensed in an “ Ask Me An- 
other.” Education means a knowledge of the rela- 
tion between facts, and a relation between facts 
implies an intellect capable of searching the why 
and the wherefore of things. As a man could not 
lay claim to being a geometrician if he were ignorant 
of the fundamental principles of Euclid, neither 
could a man lay claim to being a philosopher, or 
even a man, if he were ignorant of the basic prin- 
ciples of life, of truth, and of happiness. A mind 
may not go to the sources of knowledge because 
of a myopic interest in transitory things, just as a 
man may shorten his vision by putting his hand to 
his eyes, but such a condition is not normal. Every 
search for truth, every scientifiq enquiry, every 
piece of historical research, every painstaking mi- 
croscopic study of a biological field, every search 
for new stars and distant planets, is really a search 
for God, for every quest for knowledge is a quest for 
Truth.” In the psychological order the knowledge 
of finite trifles may be the goal, but in the ontologi- 
cal order it is God Who is first sought. Every being 
endowed with an intellect knows God implicitly 


27 Res intellectu carentes tendunt in Deum sicut in finem per viam 
assimilationis, ita substantiz intellectuales per viam cognitionis. . . Intel- 
lectus humanus magis desiderat et amat et delectatur in cognitione 
divinorum, quamvis modicum quidem de illis percipere possit, quam 
in perfecta cognitione quam habet de rebus infimis, Est igitur ultimus 
finis hominis intelligere quoque modo Deum. C. G. lib. 3 c. 25. 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 345 


in everything it knows, for nothing is knowable 
except by a similitude of the First Truth Who is 
God.” 


Love Gop 


Man must not only know God, but he must also 
‘love God. Knowledge and love are correlative. 
There is no love for the unknown, but there is 
greater love where there is greater positive knowl- 
edge. That is why a perfect proportion should exist 
between knowing and loving, as there is in the Trin- 
ity where Son and Spirit are equal. On a lower level, 
morality, for the same reason, can never be divorced 
from dogma, nor vice versa. Religion can never 
be just mere morality, as it can never be just specu- 
lation. 

Love is a movement, a unitive adaptation, a com- 
placency or an alliance with that which constitutes 
the perfection of a thing. Love, according to this 
definition, applies not only to man but to all crea- 
tures.” ‘This complacency of one thing for another 
is manifested first of all in the chemical order, in 
which each element in virtue of the property of 
valence, is capable of combining with or replacing 
other elements. In beings endowed with life this 
urge is instinct, in which love is affective; in man it 


28 Omnia cognoscentia cognoscunt Deum implicite in quolibet cog- 
nito . . . nihil est cognoscibile nisi per similitudinem prinz veritatis. 
De Veritate, q. 22 art. 2 ad 1. This does not mean God is the first 
object known by the intellect. 1. q. 83. 

22 Primus enim motus voluntatis, et cuiuslibet appetitive virtutis 
est amor . . . et propter hoc omnes alii motus appetitivi presupponunt 
amorem, quasi primam radicem. 1. p. 20 art. I. 


346 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


is rational because of reason, not instinct or blind 
law gives it its direction. But since its direction is 
derived from reason, it follows that since reason 
can know what is Perfect, man must therefore love 
the Perfect and tend to it with his whole body and 
soul. In practice this does not always work out, 
because man has free will, and he may choose, if 
he so desires, to follow the shadow instead of the 
substance. The acorn which is not endowed with 
liberty is not free to remain only a sapling, but man 
can so distort his growth as to remain always either 
an intellectual pigmy or an irresolute moron. 

But even in loving that which is below the Per- 
fect, man testifies to the great truth, that he never 
loves but that he loves the good, even though it be 
evil in the guise of good. In seeking good, in its 
varied forms, he is consequently seeking God under 
a veil, for nothing in the world escapes or can es- 
cape loving God, by the mere fact it loves the good.” 
There are really two laws of gravitation, one refer- 
ring to the material world, the other to the spiritual. 
Just as all material bodies are drawn to the centre 
of the earth because they are of the earth earthly, so 
all spiritual realities, such as the souls of men are 
drawn to their centre, Who is God. 

Loving God in the natural order, and in the sense 
in which we have taken the world, is not and never 
can be arbitrary. Everything loves God in seeking 
the end for which it was created.* ‘“ Whatever 


30 1-2, q. 1 art. 8. 


81 Unumquodque autem tendens in suam perfectionem tendit in 
divinam similitudinem., C. G. lib. 3 c. 21. 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 347 


brings us into personal relations with wider worlds, 
with larger and more enduring life, gives us a sense 
of freedom and joy; for we are prisoners of love; 
and are driven to make a ceaseless appeal to it to 
enlarge the confining walls; to constitute us, if so 
it may be, dwellers in a boundless universe, where 
truth and beauty and goodness are infinite; where 
what uplifts and deifies is eternal, where ceasing to 
be the slaves of animal tendencies, we are made citi- 
zens of a spiritual kingdom and have divine leisure 
to live for andinthe soul. Now, more than anything 
else, religion is able to realize for us these ideals; 
to diffuse itself through our whole being; to level 
the hills and fill the valleys, to bridge the chasms 
and throw assuring light into the abysses of doubt 
and desire; to make us know and feel that God is 
near, and that God is love.” ” 

Creatures not only love God, but they love God 
more than themselves, as any man must neces- 
sarily value the perfect whole rather than the part. 
St. Thomas adds that if a creature really loved 
itself more than God, this would argue that natural 
love was perverse, for it would equivalently assert 
that it could not be perfected by charity. And lov- 
: $2 John L. Spalding, “The Victory of Love,” “ Religion, Agnos- 
ticism, Education,” p. 237. 

83 Quia igitur bonum universale est ipse Deus et sub hoc bono,, 
continetur etiam angelus, et homo et omnis creatura, quia omnis creatura 
naturaliter secundum id quod est Dei est, sequitur, quod naturali dilec- 
tione etiam angelus, et homo plus, et principalius diligat Deum, quam 
seipsum. Alioquin, si naturaliter plus seipsum diligeret, quam Deum, 
sequeretur, quod naturalis dilectio esset perversa, et quod non per- 


ficeretur per caritatem, sed destrueretur. 1. q. 60 art. 5; De Malo q. 16 
art. 4 ad 15; 1-2 q. 99 art. 1 ad 2; 3. d. 30 q. 4. 


348 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


ing God, above all things else, does not mean loving 
creatures less; it means only loving God more. Jt 
does not require much time to make us saints; it 
requires only much love. 

This almost seems as if His wish that we should 
love Him argues some want on His part. God can 
receive no perfection from man’s love but, since man 
alone of all the creatures of earth can be perfected 
only by Divine Goodness, it follows that nowhere 
can the Divine Goodness be so well exercised as 
upon man. One has a great need and a great capac- 
ity to receive love, and the other has a great abun- 
dance and a great inclination to give it. Nothing is 
quite so apropos of indigence as liberal affluence, and 
nothing quite so agreeable to liberal affluence as 
a necessitating indigence, and the greater the afflu- 
ence, the greater the inclination. “We can hardly 
conceive of God creating, if He did not set a 
value upon His own creation. Yet we could not 
bring ourselves to believe that God set any great 
value upon a few millions of round orbs, or on their 
velocity, or on their fidelity to their orbits, or to 
their eccentricities, or to the mere vastness of 
siderial space, or to the various structure of mat- 
ter, or to the threads of metal in the bowels of the 
mountains, or to the vivifying force of the solar ray, 
or the gigantic play of the ubiquitous electricity, or 
to the trees, or the clear lakes, or to the sylvan 
dells, to the outlines on the seacoast, or to the gor- 
geousness of sunsets, or to the pomp of storms, or 
to anything whatever of that sort. Even we crea- 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 349 


tures should feel that we were lowering Him in our 
estimation, if we thought that He set a value upon, 
or took pains with, or had an interest in, such things 
as these. Yet we are told that He does distinctly set 
a value on the hearts of men. Man is the end of 
the material world, but God alone is the end of man. 
Physical philosophers can love strata of the rock, or 
the distribution of plants, or peculiar fauna, or the 
habits of earthquakes, or the oscillation of stars, or 
the physical geography of the sea, or the delicacies of 
chemistry, more than they love the hearts of men, or 
the inmates of a hospital. But God cannot do so. 
All His own material creation is worthless to Him in 
-comparison with one peasant’s heart, or with one 
child’s first serious prayer. He has given away, 
with the indifference of indeterminable wealth, all 
the rest of His creation; but hearts He has kept for 
Himself, and will not even share them, much less 
surrender them.” * 


SERVE Gop 


Man must not alone know God because by na- 
ture he must know Truth; man must not alone love 
God because he cannot help but desire goodness; 
man must also serve God, for knowledge and love 
result in action. The service of God is based on the 
fact that God is the Cause of all being in the world. 
“ Behold heaven and earth have a being, and they 
cry out that they were made; for they do change 
andvary. Whereas whatsoever hath not been made, 


84 F, M. Faber, “Creator and Creature,” p. 10g. 


350 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


and yet is, hath nothing in it now that was not 
before; and this is to be changed and to vary. They 
also cry out that they did not make themselves; 
but they say, ‘ For this reason we are, because we 
are made; we were not therefore, before we were 
made, that so we might give being to ourselves.’ 
Now this evidence of them that speak, is the evi- 
dence of the thing itself. Thou, therefore, O Lord, 
Who art beautiful didst make them, for they are 
beautiful; Who art good, for they are good, Who art, 
for they also are; yet they are neither so beautiful, 
so good, nor are they in such wise as Thou, their 
Creator, art; in comparison with Whom they are 
neither beautiful, nor good, nor are they at all.” * 
We owe God, because we are His; all that we > 
have and are is His since He is our Author and 
Giver. Since God owns our whole being, He owns 
all its faculties, and therefore all that we can ac- 
quire by their exercise. If a genius invents some 
labor-saving device the government, recognizing 
his rights, will give him patent rights entitling him 
to all returns on his invention. By making every- 
one who makes use of it pay royalty the government 
testifies to a strict right on the part of its creator. 
Now God is Our Creator and we are His “ inven- 
tion.” Creating us, not out of raw material, but 
by the Omnipotence of His Will, we are wholly de- 
pendent on Him. To say that He is entitled to 
royalties is merely to say that justice should be done 
to whom justice is due. The earnings of prop- 


85 St, Augustine, “‘ Confessions,” Bk. 11, chap. 4. 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 351 


erty are the proprietor’s. The rose belongs to the 
gardner, and in a deeper sense the lives of all who 
live belong to the Life of all living. God was not 
Lord until there were creatures subject to Him,” 
but when He did create He necessarily created 
beings dependent on Him, as the sun when it shines 
necessarily has rays which are dependent on it. 

Service of God means simply giving honor to 
whom honor is due, and is based on the truth that 
God is Efficient Cause of all being, for without 
Him was made nothing that was made.*” This 
recognition of God as the Principle whence all 
proceeds and the consequent recognition of a debt 
in justice to Him, is according to St. Thomas the 
very essence of religion.*® 

To serve God does not mean to be a slave, but 
rather to be free. If a flower is more noble in 
serving man by beautifying his sickroom than it 
is in the field, why should not man be more noble 
in serving God Who is above him, than by merely 
serving his fellow-creatures? 

Service of God is not founded on Divine indi- 
gence any more than royalties are founded on the 


86 Unde Deus non fuit Dominus, antequam haberet creaturam sibi 
subjectam. 1. q. 13 art. 7 ad 6. 

87 Eodem actu homo servit Deo, et colit ipsum; nam cultus respicit 
Dei excellentiam, cui reverentia debetur; servitus autem respicit sub- 
jectionem hominis, qui ex sua conditione obligatur ad exhibendam rever- 
entiam Deo, 2-2 q. 81 art. 3 ad 2. 

38 Dominum convenit Deo secundum propriam et singularem quam- 
dam rationem; quia scilicet ipse omnia fecit; et quia summum in omni- 
bus rebus obtinet principatum; et ideo specialis ratio servitutis ei debetur ; 
et talis servitus nomine latrie designatur apud Grecos; et ideo ad 
religionem proprie pertinet. 2-2. q. 81 art. 1. ad 3; C. G. lib. 3 c. 120. 


352 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


indigence of an author. God is not enriched by 
our service, but we are enriched. God is the insep- 
arable end of man, and so much so that if man 
does not attain to God he misses his own comple- 
tion. Just as learning is inseparable from knowl- 
edge, and is not added to it like frosting to a cake, 
so too, God is inseparable from the happiness of 
man. To serve God is to rule — cui servire, regnare 
est. ‘To lose God is to lose oneself, for God is not 
something extrinsic to us and to our being, as a shin- 
ing copper is unrelated to a child who takes medi- 
cine, but something much bound up with us as 
heat is bound up with fire. And the reason for all 
human misery is serving anything less than the 
Perfect for Whom we were made. A bone that is 
out of joint pains for the simple reason that it is 
not where it ought to be. A compass pointing south, 
if it were sensitive would be in pain, for it would 
not be tending toward its due direction. So, too, 
a soul that deliberately turns away from the Being, 
the Truth, and the Love which constitute the plenti- 
tude of his participated being, Truth and Love, is 
“out of joint,” in pain, and suffers. It is matter 
that enslaves, because matter has a monotony about 
it —it always acts in a determined, routine and in- 
voluntary fashion. God, on the contrary, Who is 
Pure Spirit and Pure Act, is free from such deter- 
minations, and in becoming one with Him we enjoy 
the glorious liberty of the children of God. 

There are, of course, many imperfections in the 
philosophical outlook on religion and one of these 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 353 


is the coldness of the obligation of service. But 
this is due to the fact that the outlook is purely 
philosophical, whereas religion is historical. De 
facto, there is not only the relation of sovereignty 
by which we are creatures; there is also the relation 
of paternity by which we are children, but this be- 
longs to the supernatural order. According to 
reason and nature we are merely creatures of God, 
but according to grace and revelation we are 
children. God then is not merely Lord, but Father. 
The creature is simply a fabric of the skill of God, 
related to Him as the texture to the hand that 
weaves it, indebted to Him for its existence, but 
only a thing in the outfit of the world. But in the 
supernatural order, man is a son and partakes of the 
nature of God —consortes divine nature — and 
related to Him as a child whom the parents cannot 
hinder from being like themselves. Corresponding 
to these two titles of Sovereign and Father there 
are two corresponding orders of duty. (1) We pay 
our debt to the Sovereign Lord by an act of religion. 
(2) We render duties to our Father by sentiments 
of piety. Of the two the latter is more excellent. 
The service of God must not be a purely subjective 
and spiritual one, but must also be objective and 
liturgical. It is the whole man who is dependent 
on God, hence a service rendered by the soul which 
is interior, and a service by the body which is ex- 
terior.°° The fallacy of a purely subjective worship 


89 Utruque debet applicari ad colendum Deum, ut scilicet anima 
colat interiori cultu, et corpus exteriori. 1-2 q. 101 aft. 2; 2-2 q. 93 
Bre. 35 2-2 Q. S1 art. 7. 


F ale — 


354 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


of God is that it ignores the objectivity of man, the 
realness of his environment and the presence of his 
body. Man as a composite being of body and spirit 
stands at the confines of the world of pure matter 
and pure spirit, and his service of God must betray 
this double relationship. 

The universe necessarily tends to the end for 
which it was created, but this finality never becomes 
articulate until man is reached. Rocks and rivers, 
planets and plants, flowers and forests, all are de- 
pendent for their being, their form, their end on 
God, and hence all are bound to Him by a three- 
fold relation. The necessity of religion, then, is not 
merely a psychological one, namely an outlet for 
emotions or a symbol for the world’s values. Its 
roots lie deeper than the surface scratchings of the 
human heart. Dependence is its root, and knowl- 
edge, love and service its stalk. Since not only man, 
but all creation is dependent on God,* it follows 
that things have need of religion in the broad sense 
of the term, namely, an acknowledgment of de- 
pendence. They doin their own mute way acknowl- 
edge their indebtedness to God by obeying the laws 
of nature, or instinct. But this is not enough. 
Smiling valleys won by a conqueror do not thrill 
him as much as a Vive in his honor. Speech is the 
supreme service, and dumb gaspings of irrational 


40 Deus sit finis rerum, non autem sicut aliquid constitutum, aut 
aliquid effectum a rebus, neque ita quod aliquid ei a rebus acquiratur, 
sed hoc solo modo quia ipse rebus acquiritur. C. G. lib. 3c. 18. . . Si 
igitur res omnes in Deum sicut in ultimum finem tendunt ut ipsius — 
bonitatem consequantur, sequitur quod ultimus rerum finis sit Deo 
assimilari. C. G. lib. 3c. 19. 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 355 


creatures need the complement of an intellect. Man 
supplies the want, first of all because he combines 
within himself the existence of the chemical, the 
life of the plant and the consciousness of the animal, 
and secondly, because endowed with a spiritual 
soul he can assimilate the world spiritually by an 
act of knowledge. When man knows and loves 
and serves, all creation summed up in him knows 
and loves and serves. The dumb are given a tongue 
and the senseless a power of speech, for he who is 
the priest, pontiff and king of nature speaks, prays, 
and thanks in their name. 

Man, therefore, has tremendous responsibilities, 
namely, the task of articulating the speechless 
dependence of all lower creation on the Creator. 
Failure in this task of sacramentalizing the uni- 
verse is in a certain sense the failure of the universe. 
As the universe comes more and more under the 
domination of man, the realization of his religious 
obligations should become increasingly more clear. 
What are the marvelous inventions of our day 
and the apparent discovery of the key to great 
Nature’s chest, but the secrets of God whispered 
to men? The more we get out of the universe the 
more thankful we should be. But the contrary 
seems to be the case. Intoxicated with success, 
and unmindful that the universe is a usufruct and 
not a pawn, man forgets the true Giver of good 
gifts and shouts out a conflict of religion and 
science. How could there be a conflict when 
God commanded man to be a scientist the day 


356 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


He charged him to rule over the earth and sub- 
due it? | 

In the supernatural order this duty of man to 
worship God not only in his name, but in the name 
of lower creation, becomes as clear and objective 
as the stones on a road. It was not man alone, 
but all creation that groaned for a Redeemer. But 
if this be so, why not Pantheism instead of an In- 
carnation, in order that all creation and not man 
alone might return to God? Because man is a 
microcosmos, and physically and intellectually 
sums up the universe; in becoming man, then, God 
became all things by extension. It was through 
man the universe became disordered and thistles 
grew; it must be through man that the universe 
must be reordered and grace abound. Notice how 
well this is borne out in the words of the Word In- 
carnate: “ Preach the Gospel to every creature.” 
He did not say: “ Preach the Gospel to every man,” 
but “ every creature,” because every creature needs 
to be readjusted to God, its ultimate end. Religion, 
then, is something more than a “ unified complex of 
psychical values,” or an “ attitude of friendliness 
tothe universe.” Religion, historically and philoso- 
phically, has always implied some dependence of 
man on God, even to the point of sacrifice of what 
man has or what man is. To go from religion to 
God is to assert absolute independence of God, and 
as unintelligible as to proceed from biology to life, 
or physics to matter, or sociology tomen. The sci- 
ence of biology cannot exist without life, but life 
can exist with biology. The relation between man 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 357 


and God, it has been pointed out, is that of a science 
to its object, namely, a relation of dependence. 
Relfgion without God is as meaningless as water 
without hydrogen and oxygen. Religion without 
God, Christianity without Christ —these are the 
_ vacuous non-entities which anemic thinking has 
foisted upon a non-thinking world. Man’s rela- 
tion to God is now considered in the same light as 
a man’s attitude toward the League of Nations, 
whereas man’s attitude toward certain scientific 
hypotheses is regarded in the same light as his 
attitude toward the multiplication table. We may 
empty religion of God, but we may not empty our 
cosmology of the quantum theory! 

We have no need today of a new idea of God, any 
more than we need a new idea of a triangle. There 
is a limit to adaptiveness, especially when it reaches 
a point where entities are dissolved into environ- 
ments. Ultimately there are only two possible ad- 
justments: one is to adjust our lives to truth, the 
other is to adjust truth to our lives. “If we do not 
live as we think, we soon begin to think as we 
live.” May it not be true that the desire for a new 
idea of God and religion is founded rather on a 
desire to accommodate these doctrines to the way 
men live, rather than by sound logic and right 
reason? If men want ghosts, they get ghosts; if 
men want to be Godless they are given “ mental 
projection ”; if men want to be irresponsible, they 
are made the “ off-spring of the matrix Space-Time.” 
Just suppose that men, in numerous moments of 
intellectual perversion, would so add two and two 


358 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD 


as to make five. Would it be necessary to revamp 
our mathematics and give to the world a “ new idea 
of the multiplication table,” and ignore as anti- 
quated the poor befogged individuals who still lived 
in the Middle Ages of a two-and-two-makes-four 
existence? ‘To answer that a thing may be absurd 
in the speculative order, but not in the concrete, 
is not to escape the issue; for the concrete is absurd 
only because the abstract was absurd before it. It 
is not the sun which is to be adjusted to the lens of 
the telescope, but the lens to the sun. After all, 
a healthy philosophical examination of conscience 
might reveal the astounding truth that the idea 
of God needs no more toning up than the multi- 
plication table, but that man stands in greater need 
of God than children in need of sunshine. It has al- 
ways been the great fault of man to see only the mote 
in the eye of someone else, but never the beam in 
his own. The day philosophy returns to its high 
heritage as the science of Wisdom and not utility, 
that day man will make a great discovery — he 
will discover God and in finding Him will find 
himself.* | 


41 In conclusion, it is worth remembering that this is just a philo- 
sophical study; philosophy is a study while religion is a commerce. 
Philosophy teaches us to contemplate God, while religion leads us to 
Him. Philosophy must always fall short of answering all the problems 
of religion, for religion is also an historical fact. Natural theology, 
or better, Metaphysics, must always conclude humbly, ie., with an 
acknowledgment of its own insufficiency. This we do in the light of two 
objections urged by many of our contemporaries. First of these is the 
problem of evil. There is evil in this world, the unjust prosper and the 
just suffer. How account for it? The second is the difficulty of God 
the Creator being so remote from the world, and not in it more 
intimately. 

Really these two difficulties prove Christianity and the very answers 


PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF RELIGION 359 


Sooner or later philosophy must return to its 
Father’s house, which is Wisdom and Truth, and 
realize that as all fires mount to the sun, and all 
waters flow into the sea, so too all men must re- 
turn to God, for Whom they were made and in 
Whom they find their rest, their peace, their perfec- 
tion: their vest, for “Our hearts are disquieted 
until they rest in Thee, O Lord”; their peace, for 
peace is the tranquillity of order, and order is never 
tranquil unless man loves God; their perfection: for 
in Him is found the plentitude of the human heart’s 
quest for Being, Truth and Love. A godless uni- 
verse cannot exist for it cannot bear the sorrow of 
not knowing its Cause and its Author; nor can a 
Godless humanity exist for it cannot bear the burden 
of its own heart. 
to them are the perfection of the philosophical outlook on religion. 
Original sin is the answer to the first difficulty, and the Incarnation 
the answer to the second. In the universe as constituted Christ is its 
order, its harmony and its end. As the universe would be irrational if it 
stopped with a rose, so it would be irrational if it stopped with man. 
“For without Him was made nothing that was made.” In a future 
work, Deo volente, we hope to show how Christ is the perfection of 


the universe, and that as all things were made for man, so man for 


Christ and Christ for God. 


INDEX 


A 

Abstraction, 200, 313-3143 

three degrees of, 235 ff. 
Acts of religion, 342-356. 
Aesthetics, 265-267. 
Alexander, S., 14-19, 256-257, 285-286, 295. 
Als-Ob, 184, 211-216. 
Ames, E. S., 43, 55, 282. 
Arminianism, 117. 
Atheism, 288—290. 
Aubrey, Edwin, 46. 
Augustine, St.. 342-343, 349-350. 


B 
Beauty, 265-267. 
Being, 204 ff., 261, 321; 
relation between things and human intellect, 261-270; 
relation between man and God, 271 ff. 
Belloc, Hilaire, 276. 
Benedicite, 316. 
Bergson, H., 294. 
Berthelot, M., 14. 
Bonaventure, St., 316. 
Bosanquet, B., 44. 
Boutroux, E., 229. 
Brightman, E. S., 66-67, 301. 
Bruhl-Levi, 139. 


Carr, H. W., 4, 224. 
Causality, 206; 
efficient, 331-3323 
formal, 333; 
final, 334. 
Chesterton, G. K., 252. 
Creation, 277 ff. 
Croce, B., 39, 283. 


D 
Denifle, 103. 
Descartes, 
origin of philosophy, 129-130; 
361 


362 INDEX 


method, 130-134; 
Cogito, 1373 
substance, 295. 
Dewey, John, 66. 
De Wulf, M., 128. 
Divinization of man, 269. 
Drake, Durant, 47. 


Ehrenfels, 80. 

Ellwood, Chas. A., 55, 282. 
Empiricism, 151-155. 
Eucken, Robert, 45. 
Everett, W. G., 47, 81. 
Evolution, 275-277. 
Existence of God, 207. 


Faber, F. M., 349. 

Faith, 297, 338. 

Fallacy, 
of Nominalism, 196 ff.; 
uniform method of science, 224 ff.; 
inverted relations, 259 ff. 

Faris, Ellsworth, 45. 

Fawcett, D. W., 281. 

Flournoy, 48. 


Gentile, 40, 283. 

God, 
analogical knowledge, 208; 
dependence on God, 3543 
efficient cause, 332; 
end of all things, 354; 
end of man, 359; 
existence provable, 207; 
existence unprovable, 176-178; 
final cause, 3343 
formal cause, 333; 
goodness of God, 335 ff.; 
humanization of God, 270; 
King of men, 317-3193 
knowledge of God, 342-3443 
love of God, 345-349; God, Perfect Love, 328-330, 335-336, 340, 


345 ff.; 
modern idea of God, 280 ff., 357-358; 


INDEX 


objective reality, 215-223; 
relation to beauty, 265-267; 
relation to intellect, 260 ff.; 
relation to man, 271 ff., 290; 
service of God, 349-353; 
transcendence of God, 278, 317 ff. 

Goodness, 109, 262 ff., 298 ff., 324. 

Grace, 89-92, 113, 116 ff, 

Grisar, 104. 


Haldane, V., 65. 
Hamelin, 128. 

Hardy, Thomas, 46, 57. 
Haydon, A. E., 47, 48. 
Hocking, 72, 301. 
Hoernle, Alfred, 45, 54. 
Hofiding, H., 64. 
Holmes, John H., 5. 
Humanization of God, 270. 
Hume, David, 149. 
Huxley, Julian, 44. 


Idea of God, 280 ff., 357-358; 
(v. Nominalism). 
Ideas, 210-2113 
exteriorization, 314; 
interiorization, 315. 
Immanence, 99, 119, 151-155, 181. 
Individualism, 119; 
dogmatic, 120; 
mystical, 120-1233 
pietistic, 123-126. 
Intellect, 92-93; 
abstraction, 200-201; 
first principles, 205; 
material and formal objects, 202-204; 
realism, 209-2123 
relation to being, 261; 
relation to God, 311; 
relation to goodness, 262 ff.; 
relation to truth, 262; 
relation to universe, 307-3093 
relation to will, 93-97. 
Irvine, G., 45-46. 


363 


364 INDEX 


J 


James, William, 9-14, 262, 294. 
Jones, Sir Henry, 184, 248. 


K 
Kant, 
origin of philosophy, 157-163; 
Critiques, 173-1753 
Kantian revolution and values, 157-1893 
religious development, 163-173. 
King, J. L., 288. 
Knowledge and reality, 259 ff. 


Leighton, Joseph A., 45, 73. 
Leuba, James, 50-53, 248. 
Lewis, G. N., 230. 
Life, 327. 
Locke, J., 151-152. 
Lotze, Herman, 61. 
Love, 328-330, 335-336, 340, 345 ff. 
Luther, Martin, 103-126; 
apostle of reason, 115; 
doctrine of essential corruption, 103-106; 
doctrine of nominalism, 106-108; 
juxtaposition of nature ind grace, 116 ff. 
Lyricism, 247 ff. 


M 


Mackenzie, J. S., 44, 61, 285, 294, 296. 
Man, 

his relation to God, 271-290; 

his relation to the universe, 306-309, 354-356. 
Maritain, J., Preface X, 136. 
Mathematics, 235 ff. 
Meinong, 80. 
Metaphysics, 235 ff. 
Miinsterberg, H., 72. 

Mc 

McTaggart, T., 45. 
McGiffert, A. C., 115, 125, 141, 180. 


N 


Nature, 89-92, 103 ff., 113, 116, 232 ff. 


= 
a ae 


INDEX 365 


Nominalism, 106, 196 ff., 219-220; 
Als-Ob, 211-216; 
Luther, 106; 
Whitehead, 199; 
Scholastics, 200 ff. 


Otto, Prof., 31-36, 284. 


r 


Perry, R. B., 45, 62, 73-80, 215-216, 299. 
Phelan, Gerald B., 49. 
Philosophy of atheism, 288-290. 
Philosophy of nature, 232 ff.; 
Cartesian view, 240; 
Thomistic view, 233 ff. 
Philosophy of religion, 320 ff. 
Philosophy, sacramental, 303 ff. 
Physics, 235 ff. 
Pietism, 124, 157. 
Pragmatism, 220. 
Pratt, James B., 48, 221. 
Principles, spiritual, 85-101. 
Pringle Pattison, S., 61, 71. 
Pullan, L., 118. 


Rashdall, H., 70, 71. 
Rationalism, 116, 142-151, 157. 
Realism, 209-212. 
Reality and Knowledge, 259 ff. 
Religion, 
acts of religion, 342-356; 
basis of religion, 320; 
modern definitions, 44-48; 
modern idea, 
according to Prof. Alexander, 15-19; 
according to E. S, Ames, 55; 
according to H. W. Carr, 5; 
according to B. Croce, 39-40; 
according to C. A. Davids, 5; 
according to Durkheim, 54; 
according to C. Ellwood, 55-56; 
according to Gentile, 40; 
according to T. Hardy, 57-58; 
according to A. Hoernle, 54; 
according to W. James, 10-14; 


366 INDEX 


according to J. Leuba, 50-52; 
according to Prof. Otto, 31-36; 
according to B. Russell, 36-39; 
according to R. W. Sellars, 57; 
according to G. Smith, 41-43; 
according to A. Tansley, 53; 


according to A. N. Whitehead, 19-30; 


according to Wundt, 54. 


philosophical explanation, 8-48, 320 ff.; 


psychological explanation, 48-54; 
relation to science, 243-258; 
relation to values, 292 ff.; 
sociological explanation, 54-60; 
supernatural, 353. 

Ritschl, 186 ff. 

Robinson, D. S., 61. 

Russell, Bertrand, 36-39, 47, 218. 

Ryan, James H., 268. 


Sacramental philosophy, 303 ff. 
Santayana, G., 46. 
Schleiermacher, 182-183. 
Science, 
fallacy of uniform method, 224; 
inductive and deductive, 226; 
lyricism, 247 ff.; 
modern idea, 229; 
religion, 243-258; 
St. Thomas, 228 ff.; 
value, 227-228. 
Selbie, W., 216-217. 
Sellars, R. W., 57, 81. 
Service of God, 349-353. 
Shafer, R., 253. 
Smith, Gerald, 41-43. 
Socinianism, 116. 
Sorley, R. S., 67-70. 
Spalding, John L., 347. 
Spaulding, E. G., 65. 
Substance, 152-155, 294-295. 
Supernatural, 195-196, 353. 


Tansley, A. G., 53. 
Taylor, A. E., 177, 254. 


INDEX 


Thomas Aquinas, 
analogical knowledge, 208; 
being, 204-206, 261, 321-322; 
causes, 3313 
efficient, 332, formal, 333, final, 334; 
creation, 277-279; 
divine love, 336 ff.; 
divine will, 335; 
end of all things, 354; 
end of man, 359; 
existence of God, 207; 
goodness, 298, 324-3253 
grace, 893 
intellect, 92; 
intellect and being, 261; 
intellect and will, 93 ff.; 
knowledge of God, 338-344; 
love of God, 345-347; 
man and God, 271 ff.; 
man and the universe, 306-309; 
philosophy of nature, 232, 236 ff.; 
realism, 209-212; 
sacramental philosophy, 303 ff.; 
science, 227-229, 2473 
service of God, 351; 
transcendentalism, 199-203, 258; 
Trinity, 341; 
truth, 322-324; 
will, 933 
worship of God, 353. 
Transcendence, 98, 176 ff., 199-203, 258. 
Transcendence of God, 278, 317 ff. 
Trinity, 339 ff. ! 
Troeltsch, 31. 
Truth, 262, 322-324, 328. 


U 


Uniform method of science, 224 ff. 
Universe and man, 306-309, 3547356. 
Urban, 80. 


V 


Vaihinger, H., 184, 214 ff. 
Value, 
of empirical science, 225-232; 
of philosophy of nature, 232 ff. 


367 


368 INDEX 


Values, 

definition with God as source: 
Brightman, 69-70; 
Lord Balfour, 73; 
Hocking, 72; _ 
Leighton, 73; 
Rashdall, 70-71; 
Sorley, 67-79; 

definition without God: 
J. D. Mackenzie, 79-80; 
Meinong, 80; 
R. B. Perry, 73-793 
B. Russell, 81; 

importance, 61-64; 

origin, 62-65, 293; 

philosophy, chapt. VI, 
religious development, 163-173; 
denial of extrinsic, 176-181; 
assertion of immanent, 181-189; 

scholastic concept, 298 ff. 


W 


Whitehead, A. N., 19-31, 199, 234, 242-244, 249, 257. 
Wieman, H. W., 47. 
Will, 93; 

relation to intellect, 93-97. 


